Abstract

Currently, the world is living in what is known as the Information Age, pertaining to the control and accessibility of information through digital means. Mobile devices like smartphones, tablets, and laptops have become popular due to their portability and convenience. Smartphones, in particular, have impacted the society especially as an effective medium for communication. The ease of being able to communicate easily with other people have greatly influenced the social lives of many people, especially the students. There have been a number of related studies that proves that the quality and quantity of personal conversations among students is decreasing because of their reliance on smartphones. In the Philippines, one of the recent changes in the education system is the K-12 curriculum which emphasizes the importance of communication in order to establish a global society. In line with this, the current study aims to know how Smartphone Usage influences the Social Skills of High School Students. The current study is a quantitative research that uses a correlational design. The researchers adopted a questionnaire from Gladden (2018) to know the respondent's smartphone usage and from Hanson, Dietsch, and Zheng (2012) to assess their social skills. The respondents are the Grade 9 students from Holy Family Academy. As a result of the data gathering and analysis, the study proved that there was no significant correlation between the Smartphone Usage of the students and their Social Skills.