Do Smartphone Addiction and Self-Regulation Failures Affect Students’ Academic Life Satisfaction? The Role of Students’ Mind Wandering and Cognitive Failures

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate how smartphone addiction and self-regulation failure influence students’ academic life satisfaction considering the impacts of students’ mind wandering and cognitive failures. It also sought to look at how students’ minds wander, and cognitive failures are affected by smartphone addiction and self-regulation failure among university students. Methods: The WarpPLS-SEM software was used to analyze the research data retrieved from a sample of 950 undergraduate students from universities in Egypt and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Results: In both countries, the findings revealed that students’ smartphone addiction and self-regulation failures negatively affect students’ academic life satisfaction and positively affect students’ mind wandering and cognitive failures. Additionally, smartphone addiction is positively related to failures of students’ self-regulation. Besides the negative influences of students’ cognitive failures on their academic life satisfaction, cognitive failures mediated negatively the relationship between mind wandering and students’ academic life satisfaction. Finally, students’ mind wandering mediated the relationship between smartphone addiction, self-regulation failure, and academic life satisfaction. Discussion: The study introduces fresh insights into the study variables that can be used to expand the literature on academic life satisfaction. The study provides theoretical and practical contributions to students, educators, and policymakers of education. Keywords: smartphone addiction, self-regulation failures, mind wandering, cognitive failures, academic life satisfaction, Egypt, KSA