2025 Volume 13 Issue 3 Pages 1-16
The purpose of this study is to elucidate what the self-report scales of “smartphone addiction” truly reflect by analyzing whether they are better explained by users' self-perception of usage or by actual usage log data.
In this study, we combined five months of app launch log data from 602 Android smartphone users who had given prior consent, with survey data in which participants reported their selfperception of usage for key apps. The analysis was conducted using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to examine the relationship between “smartphone addiction” and these variables. The results showed that the actual frequency of app launches, as recorded in the log data, had little correlation with “smartphone addiction”, while the self-reported perceptions of app usage were significantly related. Additionally, it was found that users with consistently high weekly smartphone usage patterns exhibited significantly higher tendencies toward addiction compared to those with lower usage patterns.
These findings suggest that “smartphone addiction”, as measured by self-report scales, primarily reflects users' subjective perceptions of their usage rather than simply indicating excessive use based on objective launch log data, thereby capturing a different dimension of behavior.
