Background: Experts suggested that the best approach for preventing the spread of COVID-19 is to limit face-to-face interaction. Therefore, education is a critical area that has been severely affected by the current COVID-19 outbreak. This study aimed to assess the effects of smartphones' use as an educational tool during the COVID-19 pandemic among the students at King Faisal University (KFU).
Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted using online questionnaires among students. Data were analysed using IBM SPSS version 22; P-value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.
Results: A total of 498 participants participated in this study, with a mean age of 22.6 years, and 83.3% were female. About 95.2% of participants agreed that smartphones would help them with the current situation for education, and 93.6% stated that they used a smartphone to study. Furthermore, 81.3% of participants preferred to use a smartphone for research rather than a library. This study found that 75.9%, 77.9%, and 48.6% of participants thought that using smartphones would develop a headache, dry eye disease, and depression and anxiety, respectively.
Conclusion: This study found that most students preferred e-learning using smartphones over the traditional learning processes, perceiving higher negative effects of smartphones on health and lower negative impacts on learning process. Using e-learning is effective during the pandemic; however, more investigations should be conducted to assess smartphones' effectiveness on learning.