Keep calm, there is an app to help you control your smartphone use

By Michelle Helena van Velthoven, John Powell and Georgina Powell

Are you spending too much time on your smartphone? Do you ever feel like you’re missing out if you have not checked your phone in a while? If that is the case, you are not the only one. But do you know what to do about it? Ironically, there are apps that could help you.

It is only ten years since Apple launched the first iPhone, but problematic smartphone use has become a new challenge to our health. Findings from a UK survey showed that UK adults on average spend a day per week (25 hours) online, 40% go online more than 10 times a day and 10% more than 50 times a day. Four in ten UK adults find that they spend too much time online, 60% consider themselves ‘hooked’ to the Internet and about a third finds it difficult to disconnect. Smartphone use can be problematic for some people due to the availability of constant connection, the addictiveness of 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.

Several non-technological and technological approaches to dealing with problematic smartphone use have been proposed, which have similarities with approaches used for moderating food or alcohol intake. For example, digital diets where people spend a couple of days without their phone, are a popular short-term approach to break people’s habit of smartphone overuse and 15 million UK adults have undertaken this approach. There are also several apps that can help people with tracking smartphone use and setting goals for moderating use, both for themselves and for their family members. Google just announced that they are building digital wellness tools into their Android operating system. However, none of these have been researched properly and there is therefore a lack of knowledge on what works effectively to help people manage their Internet and smartphone use.

In our paper ‘Problematic smartphone use: digital approaches to an emerging public health problem’ published in Digital Health, 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 excluded from this. An overview of 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 people’s lives, strengthening the definition of problematic smartphone use, and validation of its measurement. We hope that these efforts will help people to use their smartphone in a healthy and effective way.

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Article details

Problematic smartphone use: Digital approaches to an emerging public health problem

Michelle H van Velthoven, John Powell and Georgina Powell

DOI: 10.1177/2055207618759167

DIGITAL HEALTH

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Laura Steele

Laura Steele

Belfast, Northern Ireland

https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/laura-steele

John Bratton

John Bratton

Edinburgh and Calgary

https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-bratton-80603023/?originalSubdomain=uk

Alex Moersen

Alex Moersen is a Publishing Editor at Sage, managing a range of scientific and medical journals. He has a background in content management, magazine publishing, and literary publishing.

Christiana Bastos

Cristiana Bastos (CUNY 1996) is an anthropologist whose interests intersect anthropology, social history, and the social study of science, technology and medicine. She has worked on epidemics, colonial medicine, plantation societies, labor, racializations and, more recently, on plant-people connections. A senior researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences, she coordinate the ERC project “The Colour of Labour – the racialized lives of migrants” with ethnographic and historical research in the Guianas, Hawai‘i, Mauritius, S Tomé, industrial New England and contemporary agrobusiness in Europe.

Mekela Whyte-Nesfield

Mekela Whyte-Nesfield M.D is an Assistant Professor in the Pediatric Critical Care division at Children’s National Hospital. Her primary research focus is Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) associated child and family Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. She previously completed a multi-site prospective study to evaluate the prevalence of long term parental Post -Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as it relates to patients of the PICU. Currently she continues to head multiple studies and hopes to continue with PTSD and resiliency research. Her ultimate goal is to develop a program aimed at mitigation of parent and child traumatic stress in the PICU and improving long term outcomes of children in the PICU overall. X Handle: @drwhyte4

Rick Vogel

Rick Vogel is a full professor of Public Management at University of Hamburg. His current research interests are public sector leadership, cross-sector partnerships, and institutional change in the public sector.

Melissa Satzger

Melissa Satzger is a research assistant at the Chair of Public Management at University of Hamburg. Her research focuses on human resource management in the public sector and employer attractiveness in a comparative perspective.

Dr. Michelle Loy, MD, FAAP

Dr. Michelle Loy, MD, FAAP is a nationally recognized quadruple board-certified physician who received her undergraduate degree from Harvard College, her doctorate in medicine from Weill Cornell Medical College, her pediatrics residency training from New York Presbyterian Hospital-Cornell, and her integrative medicine fellowship training from Columbia University/Stamford Hospital. She utilizes evidence-based interventions from both modern medicine and time-tested traditional modalities including nutrition, movement, acupuncture, botanicals, and mind-body medicine to prevent and manage chronic medical conditions across all age groups at Integrative Health and Well-Being-Weill Cornell Medicine. She frequently presents to physicians, patients, and the community on her clinical and research interests which include, culinary medicine, botanical medicine, cancer prevention, narrative medicine, group visits, mental health, women’s health, and children’s health. As a wife, mother, and assistant professor, she is also dedicated to supporting fellow physicians, physicians-in-training, and other leaders in self-reflection and self-care.

Avneet Bhullar

Avneet Bhullar is a third-year medical student at the University of California, Irvine. She holds a Masters in Global Health Policy from the London School of Economics and continues to apply her understanding of medical anthropology and health policy to the world of medicine and global health. She serves on the board of Scrubs Addressing the Firearm Epidemic (SAFE), an apolitical advocacy group that works to ensure patient and community safety from firearms through provider trainings, gun lock education and more.

www.linkedin.com/in/avneet-bhullar

Juliane Baron

Juliane Baron is the Executive Director of the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (FABBS), a coalition of 29 scientific societies and nearly 60 academic departments. FABBS represents the interests of the brain and behavioral sciences on a wide range of federal budget and policy issues. FABBS serves as a resource to scientists interested in engaging with policymakers to connect research to policy. Baron co-chairs both the Coalition for National Science Funding (CNSF) and the Friends of National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and on the executive committee on several other national coalitions.

Previously, Baron served as the Director of Government Relations at the American Educational Research Association, leading AERA’s education and advocacy efforts on Capitol Hill and with federal agencies. Prior to that, Baron was the deputy director of government and public affairs for the Population Association of America and the Association of Population Centers. Baron’s science advocacy work has been informed by her time as an associate research scientist and project manager of Welfare, Children, & Families: A Three City Study, a multi-investigator study housed at Johns Hopkins University. For three years, Baron worked as a legislative staffer in the Texas House of Representatives. Baron received her BA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and her MPA from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas.

Editor's PicksChris BurnageAugust 24, 2018Michelle H van Velthoven, John Powell, Georgina Powell, problematic smartphone use, digital interventions, addiction, Internet, apps, Public Health, Digital Health, technology