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Category: Project

Description: Understanding how people use technology remains important, particularly when measuring the impact this might have on individuals and society. However, despite recent methodological advances in portable computing and the ability to record digital traces of behaviour, research concerning smartphone use overwhelmingly relies on self-reported assessments, which have yet to convincingly demonstrate an ability to predict objective behaviour. Here, and for the first time, we compare a variety of smartphone use and ‘addiction’ scales with objective behaviours derived from Apple’s Screen Time application. While correlations between psychometric scales and objective behaviour are generally poor, measures that attempt to frame technology use as habitual rather than ‘addictive’ correlate more favourably with subsequent behaviour. We conclude that existing self-report instruments are unlikely to be sensitive enough to accurately predict basic technology use related behaviours. As a result, conclusions regarding the psychological impact of technology are unreliable when relying solely on these measures to quantify typical usage.