Smartphone addiction (problematic use): how it differs from addiction, the signs and what helps

“Smartphone addiction” is an everyday phrase, but there is no such diagnosis in the World Health Organization’s ICD-11 or in the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-5. The only condition in the DSM-5 category for behavioural addiction is gambling disorder, with internet gaming disorder placed in Section III as a condition needing further study (Kardefelt-Winther et al., 2017). WHO added gaming disorder to ICD-11: a pattern of gaming marked by impaired control, increasing priority given to gaming over other interests and daily activities, and continuing or escalating despite negative consequences; to be diagnosed it must be severe enough to cause significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas, and would normally have been evident for at least 12 months (WHO, 2020). WHO also notes that gaming disorder affects only a small proportion of people who game (WHO, 2020). Gaming problems have their own guide: gaming disorder. Reviewing the smartphone addiction literature, Panova & Carbonell (2018) found that smartphone addiction was mentioned in neither DSM-5 nor the ICD-11 draft, did not find sufficient support from the addiction perspective to confirm that it exists, and concluded that the behaviours observed are better labelled problematic or maladaptive smartphone use, whose consequences do not reach the severity of those caused by addiction.

The Korean government uses the word gwauijon (overdependence). The smartphone overdependence survey by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Information Society Agency (NIA) defines it as experiencing increased salience (smartphone use standing out above other behaviour and becoming the most important activity), self-control failure (reduced ability to regulate use relative to one’s own goals) and serious consequences (continuing to use despite negative physical, psychological or social results); people showing all three are the high-risk group, those showing up to two the potential-risk group, and together they form the “at-risk group” (MSIT, 2026). The classification uses the smartphone overdependence scale NIA built in 2016, with 9 observer-rated items for young children and 10 self-report items each for adolescents, adults and older adults (MSIT, 2026). This guide prints neither the items nor the cut-offs: the scale is NIA’s own instrument, and its categories are survey classes from a self-report questionnaire, not a medical diagnosis.

mind.io does not offer a smartphone addiction test. This guide uses the words research and government surveys use, overdependence and problematic use, instead of addiction, and labels nobody. Researchers’ proposals about where behavioural addiction ends are a useful reference. Kardefelt-Winther et al. (2017) define it as a repeated behaviour leading to significant harm or distress, which the person does not reduce and which persists over a significant period, with harm or distress of a functionally impairing nature, and add an exclusion: the behaviour is not an addiction when it is the result of a coping strategy. Billieux et al. (2015) likewise criticised the trend of nearly every daily activity being called a new addiction and argued for looking at the psychological processes behind a behaviour rather than at symptom checklists. In other words, what matters is less how long you use the phone than why you use it and what it is costing you.

Daily hours alone cannot tell overdependence apart. The systematic review of 41 studies notes that assuming longer use is harmful may not necessarily be accurate, and that one reason for conflicting findings may be that it is not smartphone use per se but particular patterns of smartphone-related behaviour that are associated with poor mental health (Sohn et al., 2019). What the Korean definition and WHO’s gaming disorder definition have in common is not a time threshold but three things: whether the phone crowds out other activities and becomes the most important one, whether attempts to cut down keep failing, and whether use continues even as sleep, school, work or relationships suffer (MSIT, 2026; WHO, 2020).

So the signs show up not as a number but as patterns like these: “just a little” in bed turning into an hour or two and the next day falling apart, again and again; limits you set and keep missing; being unable to focus on what you have to do because being without the phone makes you uneasy; arguments with family or friends about the phone; the phone never leaving your mind. According to a report on the 2025 survey, 55.9% of the at-risk group had experienced conflict with friends or colleagues, about 40% reported difficulty with work or study, and 69.3% said thoughts of their smartphone never left their mind (Money Today, 2026). Among all respondents, 46.3% said they were “rather dependent” on their smartphone, and in the at-risk group the share was 83.1% (Money Today, 2026). Many people already know.

Conversely, if you use the phone a great deal for work, study or staying in touch but can put it down when you mean to, and sleep, relationships and obligations are intact, that is heavy use, not overdependence. One more thing to look at is whether the phone has become the way you soothe another difficulty. That is why researchers’ definitions exclude a behaviour that is the result of a coping strategy (Kardefelt-Winther et al., 2017). When you are low, anxious or lonely, the phone is often the easiest refuge, and then it is the state underneath, not the phone, that needs attention first. The depression symptoms guide, the anxiety symptoms guide and the loneliness guide are the places to start.

In the 2025 smartphone overdependence survey released by the Ministry of Science and ICT and NIA on 26 March 2026, the at-risk group (the high-risk and potential-risk groups together) was 22.7% of smartphone users, down 0.2 percentage points from 22.9% the year before, with adolescents at 43.0% and young children at 26.0% (MSIT, 2026). According to a report on the results, that share corresponds to about 10.03 million users aged 3 to 69; the high-risk group, people showing all three features, was 4.1%; young adults in their 20s and 30s were at 29.5%; and by school level, middle-school students were at 47.6%, above high-school (41.5%) and university (36.5%) students (Money Today, 2026). In the 2024 survey the figures were 42.6% for adolescents, 25.9% for young children, 22.4% for adults aged 20 to 59 and 11.9% for people in their 60s, and the survey was run as one-to-one interviews with 10,000 households nationwide (Money Today, 2025).

Keep two things in mind when reading these numbers. First, “at-risk” is a survey category drawn from a self-report questionnaire (parent observation for young children), and it includes the potential-risk group, who show up to two of the three features (MSIT, 2026). It does not mean that 4 in 10 adolescents are “addicted”. Second, the government’s statistics page warns that the age range surveyed has widened over the years, so year-on-year trends need care (MSIT, 2026).

The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family’s 2025 survey of youth media use habits is a different survey. Of 1,234,587 students in grades 4, 7 and 10 nationwide who took part, 213,243 were classified as at risk of internet or smartphone overdependence, a figure that combines the “risk users”, who have difficulty in daily life and need help from a specialised agency, and the “caution users”, whose use has grown and who have difficulty self-regulating (MOGEF, 2025). That was slightly below the 221,029 of 2024, but 14,730 fewer students took part; by school level there were 85,487 middle-school, 70,527 high-school and 57,229 primary-school students, and boys (116,414) outnumbered girls (96,829) (MOGEF, 2025). First-graders were covered by an observation survey of 237,890 parents, of whom 13,211 had a child classified in the “attention group” (MOGEF, 2025). This share of about 17% of participants (our calculation) and the 43.0% of the overdependence survey cannot be set side by side: the scales, ages and denominators differ. Worldwide, a meta-analysis pooling Smartphone Addiction Scale scores from 83 samples and 33,831 participants aged 15 to 35 in 24 countries between 2014 and 2020 reported that scores are rising across the world, highest in China, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia and lowest in Germany and France, and the authors added that the clinical interpretation of these scores should be updated in light of the trend (Olson et al., 2022b). Korea was not singled out in that comparison.

In a systematic review of 41 studies and 41,871 children and young people (mean age no greater than 25), the median prevalence of problematic smartphone use was 23.3% (range 14.0–31.2%), and problematic use was associated with increased odds of depression (OR 3.17; 95% CI 2.30–4.37), anxiety (3.05; 2.64–3.53), perceived stress (1.86; 1.24–2.77) and poor sleep quality (2.60; 1.39–4.85) (Sohn et al., 2019). But only 3 of the 41 were cohort studies and 38 were cross-sectional; the authors upgraded the evidence for depression to moderate quality, citing the consistency of the findings, but graded anxiety, stress and sleep as low quality, noted that the studies were non-randomised and at high risk of bias with varying definitions and thresholds, and wrote that reverse causality cannot be excluded (Sohn et al., 2019). Another review of 23 papers found that, without statistical adjustment, depression severity was consistently related to problematic use with at least medium effect sizes, anxiety consistently but with small effects, stress somewhat consistently with small-to-medium effects and self-esteem inconsistently, and it included correlational studies only (Elhai et al., 2017).

Sleep is the association that comes up most often. A review of 290 observational studies published up to 2017 reported associations between frequent mobile phone use and depressive symptoms and sleep problems, and between use at bedtime and shorter sleep duration and lower sleep quality; only 5% of the studies had any longitudinal design, so the author called for higher-quality studies before drawing conclusions about mechanisms and causal direction (Thomée, 2018). If you already take a long time to fall asleep or wake often, the bedroom and pre-bed sections of the insomnia guide go together with this one.

Attention is linked as well. In a US cohort of 2,587 15- and 16-year-olds without significant ADHD symptoms at baseline, followed for 24 months, each additional digital media activity used many times a day was associated with an odds ratio of 1.10 (after covariate adjustment) for ADHD symptoms over follow-up; 4.6% of the 495 students with no high-frequency activity showed symptoms, compared with 9.5% of the 114 with 7 and 10.5% of the 51 with 14 (Ra et al., 2018). The authors called the association “statistically significant but modest” and said further research is needed to determine whether it is causal (Ra et al., 2018). There is an experiment too: 221 adults from the general population kept alerts on and the phone within reach for one week and alerts off and the phone away for another, and reported more inattention and hyperactivity symptoms in the alerts-on week (Kushlev et al., 2016). If trouble concentrating has been there since childhood and shows up even without a phone, read the adult ADHD guide. Whether a phone nearby drains attention, and what helps concentration, is covered in the concentration guide. To sum up, this guide does not say that screen time causes depression. The associations are clear, but most of the data are cross-sectional, and the opposite direction, mood dropping first and the phone being used to soothe it, is just as possible.

First, design. An analysis of social media, messenger and freemium game apps picked out elements that prolong use: endless scrolling (with no natural stop at which you might reconsider and quit), social rewards such as the “like”, and the Zeigarnik effect, by which interrupted tasks are better remembered (Montag et al., 2019). The authors judged that such elements can prolong use, but also wrote that the effect of any single element is very hard to measure and that a systematic analysis would need data only app developers have (Montag et al., 2019). Notifications are similar: notification researchers described today’s notification systems as exploiting, like a slot machine, our inherent bias for variable rewards (Fitz et al., 2019).

Second, habit loops. The nudge research explains habitual smartphone use as a combination of a prompt such as a notification, the ease of picking the phone up and scrolling, and motivation, and bases its intervention on changing settings to break one of these links (Olson et al., 2022a). In the greyscale experiment, screen time fell but the daily number of unlocks did not change, which the researchers read as deep-rooted checking habits (Dekker & Baumgartner, 2024). The hand reaching first is not weak will; it is a movement hardened by repetition. How habits set in, and how they can be changed, is covered in more detail in the habits guide.

Third, mood regulation. In a cross-sectional survey of 296 people, fear of missing out (FoMO) was more strongly related to problematic and social smartphone use than negative affect or fear of evaluation (Elhai et al., 2018). Researchers critical of the addiction frame also argued for studying problematic use in the context of its compensatory functions and motivations (Panova & Carbonell, 2018), and the rule that a behaviour resulting from coping is not an addiction says the same thing (Kardefelt-Winther et al., 2017). A tool that blankets boredom, anxiety or loneliness within seconds is in your hand, so the more often those feelings come, the more often the hand goes. Cutting down is therefore never only about the phone; it has to go together with practising other ways of handling those feelings. How you treat yourself on the days you fail to cut down is something the self-compassion test can show.

There are studies that tested changing several settings at once. Two pre-registered studies with Canadian university students let participants choose from ten nudges and follow them for 2 to 6 weeks: disable non-essential notifications; keep the phone on silent, face down and out of reach; unlock with a password instead of fingerprint or face; keep it out of reach at night, on the other side of the room; turn down brightness, switch to greyscale and warm the colours; hide social media and email apps in a folder off the home screen or delete them; do on a computer what can be done there; tell people you will reply less often; leave the phone at home when not needed; and use it as little as possible overall (Olson et al., 2022a). Study 1 (51 people, pre–post) found reductions in problematic use, screen time and depressive symptoms after 2 weeks; study 2 (70 people) compared the intervention with a control group that only monitored screen time and found reduced problematic use and screen time and improved sleep quality, with screen time down by around an hour a day and problematic use scores back to normal levels for at least 6 weeks (Olson et al., 2022a). Sleep results were mixed, with little change in study 1, and the participants were university students (Olson et al., 2022a).

Notifications are better batched than killed. In a randomised field experiment with 237 people, those whose notifications were batched three times a day felt more attentive, productive, in a better mood and in greater control of their phones than those receiving them as usual, and reported lower stress, whereas those who received no notifications at all reaped few of those benefits and had higher anxiety and FoMO (Fitz et al., 2019). Greyscale showed a small effect in one study without a control group: when 84 people’s phone use was tracked for 2 weeks, a baseline week followed by a greyscale week, daily screen time fell by 20 minutes, perceived control improved and perceived overuse, online vigilance and stress fell, but the number of unlocks, productivity and sleep quality did not change (Dekker & Baumgartner, 2024).

The time-reduction experiments favour cutting down over quitting. In a study of 619 German smartphone users assigned to 7 days of complete abstinence (200), a 1-hour daily reduction (226) or use as usual (193), both interventions reduced use intensity, problematic-use tendencies and depressive and anxiety symptoms and increased life satisfaction and physical activity, and most effects were stronger and more stable over 4 months in the reduction group (Brailovskaia et al., 2023). When 143 US undergraduates limited Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat to 10 minutes per platform per day for 3 weeks, the limited group showed significant reductions in loneliness and depression compared with controls, while both groups fell in anxiety and FoMO, suggesting a benefit of self-monitoring itself (Hunt et al., 2018). In a randomised trial in which 111 healthy students (58 intervention, 53 control) cut screen time to 2 hours a day or less for 3 weeks, there were small-to-medium effects on depressive symptoms, stress, sleep quality and well-being right after the intervention, but screen time rose quickly afterwards and at the 6-week follow-up values were approaching baseline again; the sample was small and not representative (Pieh et al., 2025). A systematic review of 21 digital detox studies (3,625 participants, 12 of them randomised controlled trials) found that effects on health and well-being, relationships, self-control and performance varied across studies: some positive, some null, and some negative for well-being (Radtke et al., 2022). Taken together: you do not have to quit; change several settings at once, and readjust when the effect wears off. Keeping the phone out of reach at night is on the nudge list (Olson et al., 2022a), and if procrastination is tangled up in this, the procrastination guide follows on.

Adolescents are the age group with the highest at-risk share (43.0%, and 47.6% among middle-school students; MSIT, 2026; Money Today, 2026). But the trials above were mostly with adults and university students, so the evidence on interventions for teenagers is thinner, and the starting point is not to judge a child by hours alone. Since 1 March 2026, under the amended Elementary and Secondary Education Act, using mobile phones and other smart devices during lessons is prohibited in principle in Korean primary, middle and high schools, with exceptions when the principal or a teacher allows it for assistive devices for students with disabilities, educational purposes or emergencies, and the detailed rules on use and possession are set by each school’s regulations (MOE, 2025). According to an analysis by the Korean Educational Development Institute, 9,879 of the 11,868 schools nationwide (83.2%) had written the rules into their regulations by 31 July 2026 (KEDI, 2026). Our advice, not a study finding: at home, environment changes that worked in adult studies, such as a rule that phones stay outside the bedroom at night, are more persuasive when the whole family keeps them than when only the child is restricted.

If a child has been classified as at risk in the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family survey, with the parent’s consent they are referred to a youth counselling agency, and depending on the degree of overdependence counselling, hospital treatment, recovery programmes and parent education are provided; adolescents who need intensive recovery can also be supported in residential recovery camps that offer professional counselling and alternative activities in an environment where media use is restricted (MOGEF, 2025). The place anyone of any age can go is the Smart Rest Center (Internet Addiction Prevention Center, IAPC) run by the National Information Society Agency: counselling and prevention education enquiries at 1599-0075 (NIA, n.d.), 18 centres across the 17 cities and provinces (Digital Daily, 2026), with online, in-centre and home-visit counselling (NIA, n.d.). In January 2025 the Ministry of Science and ICT announced that from 2025 it would run outreach centres sending counsellors to schools and organisations on request, open to the whole population, extend opening hours to 8 pm twice a week, and support at-risk students identified through school prevention education with centre counselling free of charge (MSIT, 2025). Outside Korea, your family doctor or general practitioner is the first route to local services.

When phone use is one face of depression, anxiety or insomnia, that is what needs care first. If your mood has been low or flat for more than 2 weeks, worry will not stop, or sleep keeps breaking down, look at the past 2 weeks with the depression check-in (PHQ-9) and the anxiety check-in (GAD-7), read a guide that lays out treatment options such as depression: what helps, and then talk to your doctor or a mental health service. If you have thoughts of harming yourself, do not carry them alone. Reach out to a crisis line right away: call or text 988 in the US and Canada, call Samaritans on 116 123 in the UK and Ireland, or find your country’s line at findahelpline.com. If you are in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services.

Q. Is there a smartphone addiction test? A. mind.io does not offer a smartphone addiction test. The NIA overdependence scale used in the government survey can be downloaded from the Smart Rest Center website (MSIT, 2026), but its result is a survey classification, not a diagnosis, and smartphone addiction is not a diagnosis in ICD-11 or DSM-5 (Panova & Carbonell, 2018). If you are worried, the Smart Rest Center takes counselling enquiries at 1599-0075 (NIA, n.d.), and outside Korea your family doctor is the first route.

Q. How many hours a day count as overdependence? A. There is no set number. The Korean definition looks at salience, control failure and consequences, not hours (MSIT, 2026), and the review of 41 studies said that assuming longer use is harmful may not be accurate (Sohn et al., 2019). The randomised trial that used 2 hours a day or less as its target was a study design, not a diagnostic line (Pieh et al., 2025).

Q. Does a digital detox work? A. The evidence is mixed. In the review of 21 studies, some found positive effects, some none and some negative consequences for well-being (Radtke et al., 2022). In the 619-person study, cutting use by 1 hour a day beat 7 days of abstinence on most effects and held up better over 4 months (Brailovskaia et al., 2023), and in the trial that cut screen time to 2 hours a day or less for 3 weeks the gains were there but values approached baseline again 6 weeks later (Pieh et al., 2025). Reducing beats quitting, and repeating beats a one-off.

Q. Does switching to greyscale really cut use? A. A little. In the 84-person study, a greyscale week cut daily screen time by 20 minutes while unlocks stayed the same (Dekker & Baumgartner, 2024). In the studies that combined several nudges, such as disabling notifications, keeping the phone out of reach and hiding apps, screen time fell by around an hour a day (Olson et al., 2022a).

Q. Should I just turn off all notifications? A. Batching worked better than switching them off. In the 237-person experiment, the group that received notifications three times a day was more attentive, in a better mood and more in control with lower stress, while the group that received none had higher anxiety and FoMO (Fitz et al., 2019). Turning off only the non-essential ones and reading the rest at set times is closest to the evidence.

Q. We fight about the phone every day with our child. What should we do? A. Look first at whether sleep, school and relationships are holding up rather than at hours, and keep rules such as phones outside the bedroom at night as a family. In Korea, a child classified as at risk in the school survey can be referred for counselling and recovery camps with parental consent (MOGEF, 2025), and the Smart Rest Center (1599-0075) also offers home-visit counselling (NIA, n.d.). Since March 2026 use during lessons is restricted by law there, so aligning home rules with school rules makes the case easier (MOE, 2025). Outside Korea, ask your family doctor or the school counsellor what local youth services exist.

Q. I’m depressed, I stare at my phone all day, and I’m having thoughts of harming myself. A. Please do not carry them alone. Reach out to a crisis line right away: call or text 988 in the US and Canada, call Samaritans on 116 123 in the UK and Ireland, or find your country’s line at findahelpline.com. If you are in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services. Depression, not the phone, may be the first thing here, so once the crisis has passed, look at the past 2 weeks with the depression check-in (PHQ-9) and talk to your doctor or a mental health service.

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