LONELINESS DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: ITS EFFECT ON THE TREND TOWARDS SMARTPHONE ADDICTION IN EARLY ADULTHOOD WHO WORKS FROM HOME

Abstract

During the Covid-19 Pandemic, social restriction is one of the policies that the government enforces in suppressing the spread of Covid-19 cases. Thus, social life is drastically reduced. People who usually spend half of their time working at the office feel a significant difference. As a result of preliminary study, since the implementation of WFH, 60% of employees in X Inc. complained of getting lonely because they no longer have a fun social life. This study is a quantitative research that aims to determine the effect of loneliness on smartphone addiction in early adulthood who do the WFH during Covid-19 pandemic at X Inc. Data were collected via online questionnaires in two steps. The first one is pilot study (preliminary study), held in May 2021 (N=30; 56% women; age 20–27 years) and the field study held in June 2021 (N=56; 58% women; age 20–40 years). The data is being analyzed by simple linear regression. The data shows that the effect of loneliness on the tendency of smartphone addiction is 46.1%.