ArticleDigital health
Problematic smartphone use: Digital approaches to an emerging public health problem.
Article in Digital health. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 46 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
46 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Childhood maltreatment and problematic smartphone use: A multilevel, meta-analytic review.Journal of behavioral addictions · 2025Pooled it
- A Mobile Intervention for Self-Efficacious and Goal-Directed Smartphone Use in the General Population: Randomized Controlled Trial.JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2021Trial
- Nomophobia in Nursing Students: Psychological, Academic, and Clinical Impacts-An Integrative Review.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- The relationship between mobile addiction and nomophobia: What role does age play?Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Smartphone Usage Patterns and Sleep Behavior in Demographic Groups: Retrospective Observational Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Observational
- Exploring the mediating role of insomnia on the nexus between social media addiction and mental health among university students.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Association Between Digital Addiction and Physical Activity in Korean Adults Across Age Groups: An Analysis of Community Health Survey Data.Journal of preventive medicine and public health = Yebang Uihakhoe chi · 2025Article
- "Phones off while school's on": Evaluating problematic phone use and the social, wellbeing, and academic effects of banning phones in schools.Journal of behavioral addictions · 2024Article
- Effects of a Technology-Based Self-Management Intervention on Social Media Use in a College Student.Behavior analysis in practice · 2024Article
- Exploring Differences in Four Types of Online Activities Across Individuals with and without Problematic Smartphone Use.The Psychiatric quarterly · 2024Article
- Exploring successes, barriers, and enablers in the one-year digital Healthy Weight Coaching.BMC health services research · 2024Article
- Smartphone addiction, depression, distress, eustress, loneliness, and sleep deprivation in adolescents: a latent profile and network analysis approach.BMC psychology · 2024Article
- Facebook addiction and its impact on depression: a cross sectional study.Journal of health, population, and nutrition · 2024Article
- A Comprehensive Review on Digital Detox: A Newer Health and Wellness Trend in the Current Era.Cureus · 2024Review
- Validation of a modified problematic use of mobile phones scale to examine problematic smartphone use and dependence.Heliyon · 2024Article
- Internet Addiction, Sleep Habits and Family Communication: The Perspectives of a Sample of Adolescents.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Evaluating the Effectiveness of Apps Designed to Reduce Mobile Phone Use and Prevent Maladaptive Mobile Phone Use: Multimethod Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Review
- The Use of Social Media by Clinical Nurse Specialists at a Tertiary Hospital: Mixed Methods Study.JMIR nursing · 2023Article
- Problematic Smartphone Use and Social Media Fatigue: The Mediating Role of Self-Control.Psychology research and behavior management · 2023Article
- The relationship between smartphone addiction and aggression among Lebanese adolescents: the indirect effect of cognitive function.BMC pediatrics · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Problematic smartphone use is an emerging public health problem since the launch of the first smartphone 10 years ago. In this article, pathways to problematic use of smartphones, approaches to deal with this issue and their limitations are discussed. This includes problematic use of smartphones by people who self-identify that they or their family members use mobile devices in a problematic way. Extreme problematic use (e.g. relating to online gambling or heavy gaming) that severely disrupts people's lives is a form of digital addiction is excluded from this discussion. Smartphone use can be problematic for some people due to the availability of constant connection, the addictiveness of applications (apps) combined with personal psychological factors. This is facilitated by characteristics of the technology, including easy access, the possibility of escaping daily life, being able to remain anonymous online, and the frequency of alerts and messages. While various non-technical interventions, such as digital detoxes, and digital interventions, including apps to limit use, have been developed to help people control their smartphone use, none of these has proven to work yet. An overview of currently available apps for problematic smartphone use is provided. Further work is needed on various aspects of problematic smartphone use, including the understanding of how smartphone use impacts on people's lives, strengthening the definition of problematic smartphone use, and validation of its measurement, and more rigorous development and assessment of tools. We hope that these efforts will help people to use their smartphones in a healthy and effective way.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.