# Contextualizing adolescents’ self-awareness of problematic mobile phone use: a preliminary study

## TL;DR

This study explores how teenagers aged 13-15 understand and perceive their own problematic mobile phone use.

## Contribution

The study introduces a qualitative framework for understanding adolescent self-awareness of smartphone overuse.

## Key findings

- Adolescents identified drivers of excessive smartphone use and social interactions as key factors.
- Barriers to healthier use and nighttime habits emerged as significant themes.
- Findings suggest self-assessment can inform strategies to improve wellness and healthy habits.

## Abstract

Adolescents engage cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally with smartphones. Growing evidence suggests they struggle to interact with them in moderation, which has been framed in relation to behavioral addiction as problematic mobile phone use. This study contextualized 13-15 year-old adolescents’ self-awareness of problematic mobile phone use. Focus groups were conducted with 11 adolescents who assessed themselves using the problematic use of mobile phones scale. The authors used interpretative phenomenological epistemology as a guiding framework. Audio recordings were analyzed qualitatively using a constant comparison approach. Students agreed or strongly agreed with multiple dimensions of the problematic mobile phone use construct. Four major themes emerged in relation to circumstances, factors, processes, constraints, and opportunities:
drivers of excessive smartphone use,
with family or friends,
barriers to healthier smartphone use, and
nighttime habits. Adolescents’ assessment of perceived proper versus problematic mobile phone can inform hypotheses targeted at improving overall wellness and developing healthy habits in adolescence that carry over into young adulthood and beyond.