Talk:Problematic smartphone use

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Photo wanted
I was thinking of adding File:Cell phone use while driving.jpg to the article. But the problem with that photo is that it implies that this article is about "usage of cellphones in unsafe situations". In truth, the article is about something more like "overuse of cellphones which causes a person to fail in school, fail at work, or lose friends".

A photo of a man and a woman sitting at a beautifully-set table for two, one preoccupied with text messaging, the other frustrated and sad, would be better. Though see Photographs of identifiable people. Please get permission from the participants for their likeness to be used in any context, including in articles about addictions.

Cheers, —Unforgettableid (talk) 21:47, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Please expand
Please expand the article. I did |+%22pubmed+central%22+|+%22biomed+central%22 a Google search. I found that some possible CC-BY-SA-compatible Creative-Commons-licensed sources include:


 * "Measuring Problematic Mobile Phone Use: Development and Preliminary Psychometric Properties of the PUMP Scale". Published by, uh, Hindawi Publishing Corporation. Luckily, though, it appears that the authors work for legitimate American institutions. Includes a reasonable working definition of problem mobile phone use that we can quote.
 * "Mobile phone use and stress, sleep disturbances, and symptoms of depression among young adults - a prospective cohort study". This is in an open-access journal which says it has an impact factor of 2.08.
 * Lentis. See the Portable Electronics section in the book's table of contents. Minimal quality, but can be edited to improve quality.

Various publishers might put out public domain material, including selected US federal government agencies. I haven't looked for public domain sources.

Cheers, —Unforgettableid (talk) 10:01, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Text removed from article
Our article said:

Two Monash University researchers point out: "Mobile phone use is not without its disadvantages. There are certain mobile phone behaviors that are considered to be problematic, and as a result, there are an increasing number of legislative and societal controls seeking to govern aspects of their use. Mobile phones are consequently banned in a variety of settings, including hospitals, planes, and petrol stations." Source:

I have removed the text for now.

For one thing, it's an overquotation. Please see Quotations.

For another thing: True, many calls placed in inappropriate places (like hospitals) might be placed by overusers. Perhaps even most such calls. But surely not all such calls. So I'm not sure that we should discuss the problem in an article about overusers. Instead, perhaps we should leave it up to some more-general page about cellphones and society to discuss this problem.

Any thoughts?

Kind regards, —Unforgettableid (talk) 02:13, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Possible copyright violations
This article was first created by, who is probably a University of North Carolina student. I looked but could find no evidence that the article was created for an educational assignment. Early on, this article was entitled "Smartphone addiction". It was kind of Pivada7 to create the article. But it is clear that Pivada7 is not always careful about copyright.

S/he wrote our article's last paragraph. S/he wrote:

In the article Psychological Predictors of Problem Mobile Phone Use, the authors says that there are also concerns that some mobile phone users incur considerable debt, and that mobile phones are being used to violate privacy, and to harass others. In particular, there is increasing evidence that mobile phones are being used as a tool by children to bully other children.

Pivada7 lifted text almost word-for-word from the paper s/he mentions. (You can get a copy of the paper at , even without paying.)

But anyway, that paragraph is mostly about spying, harassment, and bullying. Anyone can engage in these unkind deeds. Technology makes many tasks quicker easier, including these unkind actions, but we need not mention these deeds in an article about cellphone overuse. We should simply keep (and rewrite) the bit about debt.

Cheers, —Unforgettableid (talk) 10:08, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Added to the distracted driving section.Brittny Eaddy (talk) 03:21, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Mobile Phone#Health Effects
If the page links to a sub-section of another wikipedia article ("Health Effects" section in "Mobile Phone" article), is there a way that the name can be given as something along the lines of "Health Effects, in Mobile Phone" as I don't feel the link clarifies what the page states. A revision I made was reversed (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Problem_mobile_phone_use&oldid=584261704&diff=prev), as the user felt that the change may cause confusion, leading people to think there was an article "Mobile Phone Health Effects".

If anyone knows what I should do, or if anyone can do, with this link, it'd be great, because it's actually really annoying me... the "#" in the middle of a sentence... (call my crazy...)

Meeeeeeee39 (talk) 14:55, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * While the article needs cleaning up in general, having a link contain the hash key is not unusual, as it lets the reader know exactly where they'll be taken to. -- MacAddct1984 (talk &#149; contribs) 18:11, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

The statement "People are substituting, on a grand scale, the experience of talking with people face-to-face with simply sending a text that consists of a few words and abbreviations." is absurd. It's clearly a technophobic point of view. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.203.112.141 (talk) 05:22, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree that in fact this statement could be more specific because "on grand scale" is not well defined, which could lead someone's understanding of a technophobic point of view; there is a citation for this paragraph but I still would consider the paragraph vague. I just edited including a broader perspective about connectivity issue (not only a cell phone issue), adding one citation from Sherry Turkle's work. Tell me what you think about it; my intention was to update this part of the text to a NPOV.

AlessandraDavid (talk) 02:43, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Using a mobile phone in a darkened bedroom just before sleep time can contribute to insomnia. Spending considerable time looking at a mobile phone, just a foot or more from the eyes can contribute to refractory difficulties. I don't have any citings to share, just now, but I'll run them down. If you beat me, fine. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Homebuilding (talk • contribs) 01:30, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

Proposed move to: Mobile phone addiction

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: page moved. MacAddct1984 (talk • contribs) 14:45, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Problem mobile phone use → Mobile phone addiction – The current title (problem mobile phone use) is awkward and does not conform to other similar articles (see: computer addiction, video game addiction, internet addiction disorder, television addiction) MacAddct1984 (talk • contribs) 18:17, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Support. Current title makes me thing of "can't get a signal", or perhaps "using a mobile phone as a hammer". bd2412  T 19:12, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Support. 'problem' is very ambiguous; addition is not, and as stated conforms with current terminology. --LT910001 (talk) 12:36, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Moved again, this time to "Mobile phone overuse"
I have BOLDly moved the page again, this time to the title "Mobile phone overuse".

I agree that the previous move was well-intentioned. (I didn't see the discussion in time to chip in.)

I agree that "problem mobile phone use", a term used by doctors, might imply to non-doctors that it means "the use of a broken phone as an expensive paperweight". And I agree that the related articles computer addiction, video game addiction, internet addiction disorder, and television addiction all use the word "addiction" in their titles. (Though I am not convinced that any of those conditions are true addictions.)

Still, it seems to me that reliable sources have not established any consensus that such a thing as "mobile phone addiction" exists. (See our Internet addiction disorder article's discussion of the matter. Perhaps mobile phone overuse is always a symptom of some other disorder, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder.)

And so it seems to me that use of a title like "mobile phone addiction", which the reliable medical sources do not seem to have standardized on, might violate our WP:TITLE policy.

This is why I have chosen the title "Mobile phone overuse".

If you would like to instead use the title "mobile phone addiction", first please establish here that the consensus of doctors and scientists is that this condition is an "addiction" instead of an overuse problem. Please cite textbooks, literature reviews, and/or meta-analyses; see WP:MEDSCI.

Cheers, —Unforgettableid (talk) 02:01, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

I am Zach, and I have made and posted a "Cell Phone Addiction" page so many times a decade ago that I am not surprised there still isn't such a page. At least this page exists. Some douche posing as Malcolm X kept deleting the posting before. It was pretentious and annoying. Now I just think that some corp is trying to keep cell addiction under wraps.

Edit
Unclear edit by, I assume they were trying to reference a source, but this isn't clear, and is not even in Standard English (poor grammar/no capitilisation)

Meeeeeeee39 (talk) 13:32, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Writing in the Digital Age: Evalution
The article was very informative and the division in each subject of the overall topic on mobile phone overuse was well organized. Although the 3 effects divided were social, health and psychological but while reading the article health and psychological were both similar to each other. They were connectd because the results from both of them were from Radio frequency. Other than that, this article was very useful and related to my argument essay topic very well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.62.206.205 (talk) 22:03, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Merge request
This should be merged into Nomophobia (or the other way around), they seem to be talking about the same thing, this lead states "Increased use can also lead to ... anxiety if separated from a mobile phone or sufficient signal.", whereas Nomophobia is defined as: "The fear of not having a functioning mobile phone". 17:01, 2 December 2016 (UTC)


 * No. I respectfully disagree. The pages should definitely not be merged.
 * Our article is about a possible true diagnosable illness. If a student plays cellphone games for ten hours a day and therefore flunks out of school, for example, they probably have a true diagnosable illness. On the other hand, as and  point out elsewhere, "nomophobia" is a cultural phenomenon and a normal anxiety, not a true diagnosable phobia.
 * It's true that our article states that "increased use can also lead to ... anxiety if separated from a mobile phone or sufficient signal." But that sentence appears to be an unsourced point which isn't very relevant to the subject of our article. Maybe it should be removed.
 * Kind regards, TealHill (talk) 16:24, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Weird wording re cancer; expert needed
The article contains this phrase: "heavy usage will more likely increase the risk of developing glioma tumours – a common benign tumour, a rare but deadly form of cancer." The wording of that sentence has been the same since it was added in 2014. The cited source is a dead link. So are the tumors common and benign, or rare and deadly? Wtf. Any clarification would be great. Thank you! Jessicapierce (talk) 18:47, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Could you just rename this Cell Phone Addiction already? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:199:C200:AF:8D63:4496:FE6C:7BD6 (talk) 23:37, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

The Image and proper citation for the picture
Slimtwinj (talk) 02:59, 28 February 2018 (UTC) This image which is properly cited can be a proper photo that goes with the main message of the text Slimtwinj

Title & terminology
Recognising the consensus around avoiding "addiction" in the title at present, and also that most problematic use is via smartphone, "mobile phone overuse" can still cause a bit of confusion, especially as many English speakers prefer "cell phone" to "mobile phone".

I propose we change the title to "Problematic smartphone use" as per this review.

Google scholar has 57,200 results for "problematic smartphone use" as opposed to smartphone overuse (8070), mobile phone overuse (21,000 with most top results referring to problematic mobile phone use, rather than "overuse" technology).

This is especially pertinent as no-one knows how much time is "overuse" - simply that some use is problematic for some people. --02:01, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

/r/phonesarebad
this entire article. it's dumb. like yea people use their smartphone a lot, but it's not an addiction if it isn't even bad for you in the first place.

As part of the school assignment, I added some information. Lee.yuji (talk) 12:30, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Rewriting the whole article
It is important to write the whole article by following WP:MOS and and help by avoiding first person perspective we, our and us. This result in inducing original researches claims on Wikipedia, since it is an encyclopedia with reliable secondary sources which such those researches are published in neutral point of view statements by reducing insertion pronouns. Cleanups are necessarily required for rewriting as WP:NPOV. The Supermind (talk) 16:54, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

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When did the real addiction start?
Did the addiction to cell phones start when the very first cell phones came out or did it really start when newer phones came out and people could do more than just call?

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Guild copy edit
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