Objective and perceived smartphone use volume, addiction risk, and deprivation feelings

Research on the risk of smartphone addiction (RSA) relies on self-reports, despite evidence that subjective and objective measures are unrelated. This study examined relationships among recorded iPhone use, perceived use, app patterns, smartphone deprivation feelings (SDF), and RSA.

One hundred iPhone users (M_age = 24.37 ± 7.78; 38 males) provided screenshots of iOS Screen Time data collected over eight days. We combined indicators of iPhone use across app categories into hedonic and utilitarian indices and assessed RSA using the Smartphone Application Based Addiction Scale (SABAS) and SDF using a Smartphone Deprivation Inventory.

Based on the SABAS, 29% of participants were at high risk of RSA, which correlated with SDF, hedonic use, and perceived use. Objective use showed a weak association with RSA (r = 0.20, 95% CI [-0.001, 0.38]). Regression revealed that SDF and perceived use were independently associated with RSA, explaining 33.8% of the variance, while hedonic use, age, and gender added no additional variance. Perceived use mediated the link between objective iPhone use and RSA. RSA was more strongly associated with SDF than with objective use. Nearly 80% of use was hedonic, with over 50% related to social media.

These findings suggest that self-appraised smartphone use and SDF are more closely related to questionnaire-assessed RSA than to objectively measured volume. Since RSA, perceived use, and SDF were all self-reported, the results do not imply that actual use volume is unimportant. Instead, they highlight the importance of subjective appraisal and deprivation-related experiences in RSA assessments.