Association between nomophobia and health consequences among university students: a systematic review protocol

The review will examine the association between nomophobia and health outcomes among university students.

Nomophobia is characterized by the fear of losing access or connectivity to one's mobile phone, due to issues such as technical problems, battery depletion, or involuntary separation. As nomophobia is a relatively recent phenomenon, data quantifying the adverse effects are crucial, and its relationship with physical, psychological, and psychosocial health consequences among university students remains unclear.

This review will include cross-sectional, case-control, and cohort studies focusing on university students, regardless of their sex and geographic location, who were assessed as nomophobic (based on the Nomophobia Questionnaire [NMP-Q] developed in 2015). The studies will need to report the students' physical, psychological, and psychosocial health consequences due to nomophobia.

This review will follow the JBI methodology for systematic reviews of etiology and risk. Academic and non-academic databases and gray literature will be searched, including MEDLINE (Ovid), Embase (Ovid), CINAHL (EBSCOhost), Cochrane CENTRAL, Web of Science Core Collection, ProQuest, Health and Medical Collection (ProQuest), PsycINFO (Ovid), and Google Scholar (up to 20 pages). Titles, abstracts, and full texts of included studies will be independently screened by 2 reviewers, with any disagreements resolved by a third reviewer. Critical appraisal will be conducted using JBI checklists. Where possible, the studies will be pooled using random-effects meta-analysis. If statistical pooling is not possible, the findings will be presented in narrative format, including tables and figures. Certainty of the evidence will be assessed using the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) approach.

PROSPERO CRD420251002138.