Welcome to our Journal of the Month news release series, where we highlight some of the work that is taking place within the psychology division. This month, we are featuring a journal from Lucy Hitcham and Richard James, titled: ‘The Relationship Between Smartphone Use And Smartphone Addiction: An Examination Of Logged And Self-reported Behavior In A Pre-registered, Two-wave Sample’. Lucy has put together a few words describing what their research entails.
‘Smartphones have increased in popularity and utility over the last few decades which for some, has triggered concern about how this may negatively impact mental health and possibly lead to ‘addiction’. However, such claims and research rely heavily on self-report measures of smartphone use and addiction rather than actual usage metrics. In our study, we asked participants to provide the objective ‘screen time’ data from their device settings, along with estimates of their use and a series of self-report mental health and smartphone addiction scales. Our main finding was that self-reported estimates of smartphone use were more strongly correlated with higher smartphone addiction scores, which were associated with poorer mental health, than actual usage time. This suggests that how people perceive their smartphone use was more predictive of smartphone addiction than their actual use, further highlighting problems with self-report measures. This calls into question claims that greater smartphone use leads to poorer mental health when this relationship appears much more complex.’
If this article has caught your interest, you can read it at the following place: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/21378449/the-relationship-between-smartphone-use-and-smartphone-addiction-an-examination-of-logged-and-self-reported-behavior-in-a-pre-registered-two-wave-sample
Posted on Wednesday 19th July 2023