Original Research

SAGE Open
July-September 2024: 1–21
Ó The Author(s) 2024
Bibliometric Analysis of Smartphone DOI: 10.1177/21582440241271286
journals.sagepub.com/home/sgo
Addiction Literature

Boon Yew Wong1 , Kee Jiar Yeo1, and Shih-Hui Lee1

Abstract
Smartphone addiction has been widely recognized as a notable global public health issue. Researchers have already conducted
numerous researches to look into various aspects of smartphone addiction such as risk/protective factors, negative conse-
quences, prevalence, and intervention strategies. Despite the existence of these researches, they remain fragmented in the
existing literature, which make it challenging for researchers to have an integrative view of smartphone addiction literature.
Addressing this research gap, this study conducts bibliometric analysis on the 924 publications extracted from Scopus. More
specifically, through the use of various performance indicators (e.g., total number of citations/publications and citation per
publication), this study has identified the publication trend, most influential/productive journals, authors, and publications.
Furthermore, through co-word analysis conducted on the title and abstract of publications, this study has also identified and
briefly elaborated on the research themes in the existing literature of smartphone addiction (i.e., protective/risk factors, neu-
robiological mechanisms, and intervention; prevalence and negative consequences; scale development and psychometric
properties). Taken together, this study provides researchers especially those new to the field of smartphone addiction a one-
stop platform to gain an aggregative view of smartphone addiction literature.

Plain language summary

With the aim to provide researchers an integrative view of smartphone addiction literature, 924 publications related to
smartphone addiction were extracted from Scopus and analyzed using bibliometric approach. More specifically, through
examining the historical trajectory of publication quantity in the field of smartphone addiction, this study has identified
the publication trend. It has found that the number of publications has been increasing in the period of 2011 to 2022
and most of the articles (approximately 67%) were published in the period between 2020 and 2022. These have
reflected that smartphone addiction is a relatively new and emerging field of research that has recently started to gain
popularity, which is expected to stay relevant and gain more and more attention from academic community in the
coming years. Furthermore, with the use of various performance indicators (e.g., total number of citations/publications
and citation per publication), this study has identified (1) most influential/productive journals, (2) most influential/
productive authors, and (3) most influential publications in the existing literature of smartphone addiction, which have
respectively revealed (1) the journals that can be targeted for effective search of publications related to smartphone
addiction and/or submission of research output related to smartphone addiction, (2) the prominent/established authors
that can be targeted for collaboration and/or trustworthy advice in smartphone addiction research, and (3) the
publications that can serve as good starting points for researchers or prospective researchers to quickly pick up the
knowledge needed to do smartphone addiction research. Furthermore, through co-word analysis conducted on the
title and abstract of publications, this study has also identified and briefly elaborated on the research themes in the
existing literature of smartphone addiction (i.e., protective/risk factors, neurobiological mechanisms, and intervention;
prevalence and negative consequences; scale development and psychometric properties), which has provided an

1
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Skudai, Johor Bahru, Malaysia

Corresponding Author:
Boon Yew Wong, School of Education, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Skudai, Johor Bahru, Malaysia.
Email: [email protected]

Creative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of
the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages
(https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
2 SAGE Open

overview of what researchers have been doing in the existing literature of smartphone addiction. Taken together, this
study provides researchers especially those new to the field of smartphone addiction a one-stop platform to gain an
aggregative view of smartphone addiction literature.

Keywords
bibliometric analysis, co-word analysis, performance analysis, Scopus, smartphone addiction

Introduction and/or validate scales for the assessment of smartphone

addiction (D. Kim et al., 2014; Kwon, Kim, et al., 2013;
Smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing Kwon, Lee, et al., 2013; Lin et al., 2014), (2) determine
features. Since its introduction in 2007, it has penetrated the prevalence of smartphone addiction (Cha & Seo,
into almost every aspect of people’s life. People nowa- 2018; Lim et al., 2021; Okasha et al., 2021), (3) identify
days do not only use smartphone for phone calls, text the risk and/or protective factors of smartphone addic-
messaging, but also many other purposes such as infor- tion (Bian & Leung, 2015; Mahapatra, 2019), and lastly
mation search, entertainment, shopping, and learning. (4) identify the negative consequences associated with
On the other hand, smartphone is highly portable due to smartphone addiction (Mahapatra, 2019; Nayak, 2018;
its tiny size. It can easily be carried along, which make it Samaha & Hawi, 2016).
accessible for people anywhere and anytime. Due to the The multiple research streams in the existing literature
multifunctionality and accessibility of smartphone, peo- of smartphone addiction have made it necessary for
ple can easily spend great amount of time on using their researchers to have a review of what is currently known
smartphone. It may disrupt their social and/or work or not known about smartphone addiction (Khan &
obligations and subsequently cause negative life conse- Khan, 2022). In this regard, some researchers have
quences (Elhai et al., 2017). Although it is widely known already conducted literature reviews on smartphone
that spending excessive time on using smartphone may addiction (Busch & McCarthy, 2021; Harris et al., 2020;
disrupt social and/or work obligations and subsequently Osorio-Molina et al., 2021). For instances, Harris et al.
cause negative life consequences, people continue doing (2020) have reviewed the measurement scales of smart-
it (Elhai et al., 2017). This style of smartphone use is phone addiction. Busch and McCarthy (2021) have pro-
commonly termed ‘‘smartphone addiction,’’ which refers vided a review of the antecedents and consequences of
to the use or persistent use of smartphone despite the smartphone addiction. Osorio-Molina et al. (2021) have
recognition that it can cause daily life disturbances or reviewed the risk factors and adverse effects of smart-
adverse consequences (Elhai et al., 2017). In most phone addiction among nursing students.
instances, smartphone addiction is characterized by While these reviews have enriched the extant body of
symptoms that resemble to substance addiction (e.g., knowledge, they are fragmented and narrowly focused.
alcohol/drug), which include (1) withdrawal symptom More specifically, most of the existing literature reviews
(i.e., feeling anxiety, restless, irritability when smart- are systematic literature review (SLR; refer to Table 1 for
phone is not available or usable), (2) disregard of adverse more details). To identify the research themes in a given
consequences (i.e., continue using despite the knowledge field, this type of literature review typically requires
of having persistent or recurrent physical or psychologi- researchers to manually examine the full content of pub-
cal problem resulting from use or excessive use), (3) loss lications and thus tend to be less comprehensive in cover-
of control (i.e., repeated unsuccessful attempts to cut age (e.g., tens to low hundreds of articles). In such case,
down use duration or frequency), and lastly (4) tolerance systematic literature review (SLR) has been widely
symptom (i.e., longer use duration or higher use fre- argued by scholars to better suit for confined research
quency is required to achieve satisfaction; Panova & area or narrow scope of review (Donthu et al., 2021).
Carbonell, 2018). These have explained why most of the existing literature
Smartphone addiction has been found to be highly reviews have contents pertaining to only one or two
prevalent across countries especially among adolescents aspects of smartphone addiction (e.g., risk and protective
and young adults (Olson et al., 2022). Inspired by the factors/prevalence/measurement scales/negative conse-
high prevalence of smartphone addiction and the notion quences; refer to Table 1 for more details), which make it
that smartphone addiction may cause negative life conse- difficult for researchers to have a complete overview of
quences, scholars have devoted great attention to the the literature of smartphone addiction.
research of smartphone addiction (Khan & Khan, 2022). There are also reviews of smartphone addiction litera-
More specifically, scholars have attempted to (1) develop ture conducted with meta-analysis (refer to Table 1 for
Wong et al. 3

Table 1. Previous Literature Review on Smartphone Addiction.

Authors Core focus Review approach

1 Busch and McCarthy (2021) Antecedents, consequences, and corrective actions of Systematic Literature Review (SLR)
smartphone addiction
2 Elhai et al. (2017) Relationships between psychopathology severity and Systematic Literature Review (SLR)
smartphone addiction
3 Carvalho et al. (2018) Relationship between personality traits and smartphone Systematic Literature Review (SLR)
addiction and Meta Analysis
4 Elhai et al. (2019) Relationship between anxiety symptoms severity and Systematic Literature Review (SLR)
smartphone addiction
5 Yang et al. (2020) Association of smartphone addiction with poor sleep Systematic Literature Review (SLR)
quality, depression and anxiety and Meta Analysis
6 Harris et al. (2020) Measurement scales developed and used to measure Systematic Literature Review (SLR)
smartphone addiction
7 Mac Cárthaigh et al. (2020) Relationship between sleep and smartphone addiction Systematic Literature Review (SLR)
8 Fischer-Grote et al. (2021) Impact of smartphone addiction on quality of life of Systematic Literature Review (SLR)
children and adolescents
9 Osorio-Molina et al. (2021) Risk factors, adverse effects, and prevalence of Systematic Literature Review (SLR)
smartphone addiction and Meta Analysis
10 Ratan et al. (2021) Adverse health outcomes associated with smartphone Systematic Literature Review (SLR)
addiction
11 Ryding and Kuss (2020) Passive objective measures developed or used to assess Systematic Literature Review (SLR)
smartphone addiction
12 Fischer-Grote et al. (2019) Risk factors for smartphone addiction among children Systematic Literature Review (SLR)
and adolescents
13 Marino et al. (2021) Association between smartphone addiction and social Systematic Literature Review (SLR)
media addiction
14 Yu and Sussman (2020) Measurement scales developed and used to measure Systematic Literature Review (SLR)
smartphone addiction
15 Khan and Khan (2022) Research themes/intellectual structure of holistic Bibliometric Analysis
smartphone addiction literature and future research
directions
16 Olson et al. (2022) Prevalence of smartphone addiction across 24 countries Meta-analysis

more details). Scholars have repeatedly highlighted that been widely argued and proven to be more effective in
meta-analysis is an approach entirely developed to presenting a full sketch of a specific scientific field
synthesize multiple existing statistical evidences and draw (Donthu et al., 2021; Gao et al., 2020; Goyal & Kumar,
an overall conclusion on a single aspect of certain phe- 2021).
nomenon (e.g., prevalence of smartphone addiction) or Inspired by these, Khan and Khan (2022) have con-
relationship between two variables (e.g., relationship ducted bibliometric analysis with the aim to identify the
between personality traits and smartphone addiction). publication trends, most productive/influential authors,
Thus, it is essentially unable to provide a thorough retro- publications, and journals as well as research themes in
spective or assessment of smartphone addiction literature the literature of smartphone addiction. However, the
(Donthu et al., 2021). These circumstances have high- analysis conducted by Khan and Khan (2022) suffers
lighted the need for a comprehensive review of the exist- from two main limitations. Firstly, they have only used
ing smartphone addiction literature, which can bring ‘‘smartphone addiction’’ and ‘‘problematic smartphone
together the fragmented knowledge and serves as a one- use’’ as their keywords for literature search. However, in
stop platform that allows researchers to gain a complete fact, researchers in the field of smartphone addiction
overview of smartphone addiction literature (Khan & have also used other terms to represent the same con-
Khan, 2022). In this regard, bibliometric analysis seems struct including ‘‘compulsive smartphone use,’’ ‘‘exces-
to be the solution. Bibliometric analysis, benefits from sive smartphone use,’’ ‘‘smartphone overuse,’’ and
the technology-enabled automated analysis of quantita- ‘‘smartphone dependence.’’ In such circumstances, it is
tive measures (e.g., citations and co-occurrences), tend to reasonable to expect that they may miss out on some
be more extensive in coverage (e.g., high hundreds to valuable research papers related to smartphone addic-
thousands of articles) than other types of reviews (e.g., tion. Secondly, they have only covered studies up to
systematic literature review, meta-analysis). It has also May 2021. However, since then, the literature of
4 SAGE Open

smartphone addiction has grown rapidly. As a result, that Scopus has approximately 20% wider coverage of
many newer studies on smartphone addiction are not academic journals than Web of Science (WoS) database.
covered in their review. Apart from the two databases noted above, Google
Addressing the research gaps discussed above, the bib- Scholar, Dimensions, and PubMed have also been
liometric analysis conducted in this study aims to provide employed by previous bibliometric reviews (AlRyalat
researchers a one-stop platform to gain good understand- et al., 2019; Falagas et al., 2008; Singh et al., 2021).
ing of the literature of smartphone addiction and address However, it should be noted that (1) the bibliographic
the following research questions (RQs): data provided by Google Scholar is often inaccurate or
RQ1: What are the publication trends in the literature incomplete (Falagas et al., 2008), (2) Dimensions include
of smartphone addiction? preprints or full draft research papers that are shared pub-
RQ2: Which are the most productive or influential licly before it has been peer reviewed (Singh et al., 2021),
journals in the literature of smartphone addiction? and (3) PubMed has a narrow coverage of academic jour-
RQ3: Who are the most productive or influential nal because it focuses only on life sciences and biomedical
authors in the literature of smartphone addiction? disciplines (AlRyalat et al., 2019). Thus, these databases
RQ4: Which are the most influential publications in (i.e., Google Scholar, Dimensions, PubMed) may not be
the literature of smartphone addiction? credible or reliable data sources for bibliometric analysis.
RQ5: What are the major research themes in the liter- Building on the discussions above, Scopus has been
ature of smartphone addiction? widely recommended by numerous researchers for the
extraction of data needed for bibliometric analysis
(Kumar et al., 2022; Nagariya et al., 2020).
Methodology Although Scopus has been usually considered as one
of the largest abstract and citation databases of peer-
Data Collection and Cleaning reviewed literature, scholars have pointed out that its
To conduct bibliometric analysis on the literature of journal coverage differs substantially from the other
smartphone addiction, bibliographic data first needs to databases (e.g., Web of Science, Dimensions; Caputo &
be retrieved from bibliographic databases. Scholars have Kargina, 2022). For examples, Singh et al. (2021) have
pointed out that ‘‘the number of bibliographic databases found that (1) only 33.93% of journals indexed in Scopus
is high (e.g., PubMed, EMbase, SpringerLink, etc.), but (N = 13,489) overlap with those indexed in Web of
not all of them provide information that allows easily Science (WoS) and (2) only 17.78% of journals indexed
performing bibliometric analyses’’ (Moral-Muñoz et al., in Dimensions (N = 13,149) overlap with those indexed
2020, p. 3) and ‘‘existing software can only process docu- in Web of Science (WoS). Accordingly, scholars have rec-
ments from some databases (Gan et al., 2022, p. 2). For ommended merging the bibliographic data downloaded
examples, Vosviewer can only analyze bibliography data from several databases because it is likely to result in
downloaded from Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, and more comprehensive bibliometric analysis (Caputo &
PubMed while SciMat can only analyze bibliographic Kargina, 2022).
data downloaded from Web of Science (WoS) and However, due to the fact that different databases have
Scopus (Gan et al., 2022). different format of bibliographic data, some scholars
Among various bibliographic databases, due to the have explicitly pointed out that merging bibliographic
fact that ‘‘most existing software has been developed for data downloaded from different databases is a difficult
WoS and Scopus databases’’ (Gan et al., p. 2) and and error-prone task. It requires researchers to have cod-
‘‘almost all software tools and libraries can import data ing skills or knowledges that are beyond the skill sets of
downloaded from WoS and Scopus’’ (Moral-Muñoz many researchers especially those in the field of social
et al., 2020, p. 8), Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus sciences (Caputo & Kargina, 2022). Also, the merge of
have been the two most employed databases for biblio- bibliographic data downloaded from different databases
metric analysis (Caputo & Kargina, 2022; Singh et al., requires access to several software packages such as
2021). Although both databases provide comprehensive Endnote, R studio, Word and Excel VBA macros, which
coverage of academic journals and allows efficient retrie- may not be widely and freely accessible. As a result, the
val of complete and accurate bibliographic information majority of scholars tend to use only one database to
needed for bibliometric analysis (e.g., citation informa- extract bibliographic data for their bibliometric analysis
tion, abstract, keywords, author details, references of (Caputo & Kargina, 2022). From the same vein, the rec-
each article), it should be noted that Scopus has been ommendation of Donthu et al. (2021, p. 293) is ‘‘to settle
found to have a wider coverage of academic journal than on one appropriate database to mitigate the need for
Web of Science (WoS; Falagas et al., 2008; Singh et al., that consolidation, as minimizing unnecessary action
2021). For examples, Falagas et al. (2008) have found items can help to mitigate potential human errors.’’
Wong et al. 5

Inspired by the notions highlighted above, this study has published before 2008 were excluded. Such approach
opted Scopus as the only database to extract the biblio- was expected to greatly exclude studies related to the use
graphic data needed for bibliometric analysis in this of older cellular phone (those without operating system
study (e.g., citation information, abstract, keywords, and access to internet and many other multimedia con-
author details). tents such as online games, YouTube, social media;
With regard to the identification of literature search Elhai et al., 2017; Marino et al., 2021). The search was
terms, Donthu et al. (2021, p. 293) have highlighted that further refined to include only articles written in English.
researchers should ‘‘consult the literature to identify a Articles written in other languages (e.g., Spanish,
relevant combination of search terms.’’ Accordingly, this German, Portuguese, Italian, Turkish, Chinese, Korean,
study has consulted the literature of smartphone addic- French, Hungarian, Bosnian, Czech, Japanese, Persian,
tion and found that there were other terms used by Polish) were excluded, which has been a common prac-
researchers to represent the same construct such as ‘‘pro- tice in bibliometric studies (Nagariya et al., 2020).
blematic smartphone use’’ (Elhai et al., 2017), ‘‘compul- Furthermore, in order to ensure the quality of dataset,
sive smartphone use’’ (Panda & Jain, 2018), ‘‘excessive this study has included only articles published in peer-
smartphone use’’ (Shen & Wang, 2019), smartphone reviewed journal as they have already been evaluated by
overuse (Kim et al., 2019), ‘‘smartphone dependence’’ (J. peers to be of a suitable quality for publications in aca-
L. Wang et al., 2020), ‘‘problematic mobile phone use’’ demic journals and thus more likely to provide trust-
(Li et al., 2021), and ‘‘mobile phone addiction’’ (Gao worthy research findings (Stehmann, 2020). Accordingly,
et al., 2018). publications of other types such as conference paper,
However, scholars have pointed out that ‘‘problematic review, book chapter, conference review, erratum, editor-
mobile phone use’’ and ‘‘mobile phone addiction’’ are dif- ial, letter, note, data paper were excluded.
ferent from ‘‘smartphone addiction.’’ They represent a A literature search was conducted with the aforemen-
broader construct than smartphone addiction (Duke & tioned criteria in Scopus database on 15 August 2022,
Montag, 2017; Montag et al., 2015). More specifically, the which has resulted in 1,088 published articles. However,
term ‘‘mobile phone’’ covers both older cellular phone the data retrieved should not be directly analyzed
(those without operating system and access to internet and because it is likely to contain studies that fall beyond the
many other multimedia contents such as online games, scope of smartphone addiction literature. Accordingly,
YouTube, social media) and smartphone. Accordingly, in order to ensure the representativeness of sample data,
when comes to the study of smartphone addiction, scho- this study has only included the studies with primary
lars have argued that it would be good for researchers to focus on smartphone addiction and excluded those stud-
use smartphone-specific terms (e.g., smartphone addiction, ies that have only mentioned the term ‘‘smartphone
problematic smartphone use) and employ measurement addiction,’’ ‘‘problematic smartphone use,’’ ‘‘compulsive
scale specifically tailored for smartphone addiction (Bian smartphone use,’’ ‘‘excessive smartphone use,’’ ‘‘smart-
& Leung, 2014; D. Kim et al., 2014; Rozgonjuk et al., phone overuse’’ or ‘‘smartphone dependence’’ in their
2016). These have explained why some researchers have main texts but primarily focused on other topics (e.g.,
insisted the use of term ‘‘smartphone’’ rather than ‘‘mobile internet addiction; social media addiction; problematic
phone’’ in their study of smartphone addiction (Bian & use of short-form video applications; phubbing behavior;
Leung, 2014). For example, Bian and Leung (2014, p. 9) fear of missing out; metacognitions about smartphone
have modified the item ‘‘I have attempted to spend less use; flow experience). For example, Huang et al. (2022)
time on my mobile phone but am unable to’’ to be ‘‘You have repeatedly mentioned the term ‘‘smartphone addic-
have attempted to spend less time on your smartphone tion’’ and ‘‘problematic smartphone use’’ in their study
but are unable to.’’ Building on the notions highlighted but their core focus was on problematic use of short-
above, given the fact that the focus of this bibliometric form video applications. It was outside the scope of
review was on smartphone addiction, the keywords (‘‘pro- smartphone addiction literature and thus excluded from
blematic smartphone use’’ OR ‘‘smartphone addiction’’ the dataset of this study.
OR ‘‘compulsive smartphone use’’ OR ‘‘excessive smart- To do these, the title, abstract, and keywords of each
phone use’’ OR ‘‘smartphone overuse’’ OR ‘‘smartphone article were screened. Full text of articles was also
dependence’’) were used in combination with Boolean accessed if there was still doubt on the relevance of stud-
operators (e.g., OR) to search in the title, abstract, and ies after screening the title, abstract, and keywords.
keywords of articles. Building on the processes noted above, 164 articles were
As the first ever smartphone was introduced in 2007, identified to fall beyond the scope of smartphone addic-
this study has only included studies published after 2007. tion literature and thus excluded from the dataset of this
More specifically, this study has limited the time span of study. Accordingly, only 924 articles were taken as the
its literature search to 2008 to 2022 and thus studies samples for bibliometric analysis in this study.
6 SAGE Open

Data Analysis
There are two major techniques for bibliometric analysis,
namely (1) performance analysis and (2) science mapping
analysis. Performance analysis is a descriptive technique
that focuses on examining the performance of different
research constituents (authors, journals, articles) in a
given field. Two most prominent measures in perfor-
mance analysis are the quantity of publications and quan-
tity of citations, which respectively reflect the productivity
and impact/influence of research constituents (authors,
journals, articles, countries). There are also performance
indicators that combine the quantity of publications and
quantity of citations such as number of cited publications,
and citation per publication (Donthu et al., 2021). The
aforementioned performance indicators were applied in
this study to provide insights on (1) the current publica-
tion trends (RQ1), (2) the most productive and influential
journals (RQ2), (3) the most productive and influential
authors (RQ3), (4) the most influential publications
(RQ4). Performance indicators used to address each of
the research questions (RQs) were highlighted in detailed
in Figure 2. With regard to the software applied in the
performance analysis of this study, Harzing’s Publish and
Perish was deployed to compute various citation metrics
(i.e., citation per publication, number of cited publica-
tions), whereas Microsoft Excel was used to conduct fre-
quency analysis on the quantity of publications/citations
(i.e., total number of publications/citations by year) and
generate corresponding graphical representations.
On the other hand, science mapping analysis focuses
on identifying the relationship between research constitu-
Figure 1. Flow diagram of the data collection ents (e.g., keywords; Donthu et al., 2021). Among vari-
ous science mapping techniques, co-word analysis was
conducted in this study on the title and abstract of publi-
A flow diagram of data collection was presented in cations in smartphone addiction literature. This tech-
Figure 1. After identifying the samples for bibliometric nique assumes that subject terms that frequently appear
analysis of this study, bibliographic data corresponding to together are likely to be talking about same topic or have
the samples (i.e., title of articles, names/affiliation of a thematic relationship with each other. Accordingly, by
authors, abstract, keywords, references) were exported identifying and clustering the subject terms that often
from Scopus database and saved as Comma-Separated appear together, researchers would be able to identify
Values (.csv) and Research Information System (.ris) file. research themes in a specific scientific field (Donthu
It is important to note that the bibliographic data exported et al., 2021). Co-word analysis has been widely used and
from Scopus database may contain erroneous entries. proven to be effective in uncovering the research themes
Specifically, the name of same authors or title of same in the field of medical tourism (De la Hoz-Correa et al.,
journals may be inconsistent in the dataset. In this regard, 2018), environmental crisis management (Dai et al.,
scholars have highlighted that the inconsistencies of 2020), child–computer interaction (Giannakos et al.,
authors name and journal titles should be corrected in 2020), and knowledge-hiding (Bernatović et al., 2022).
order to avoid distorting the results (Donthu et al., 2021; Inspired by these, co-word analysis was applied in this
Zupic & Čater, 2015). Inspired by these, this study has study to uncover the research themes in the existing liter-
ensured the name of same authors or title of same journals ature of smartphone addiction (RQ5).
to be consistent and represented author or journal data Co-word analysis in this study was carried out with
under one specific form of representation if there was any Vosviewer, a software designed to visualize the connec-
inconsistency to assure accurate analytical findings. tions among subject terms. In the network visualization
Wong et al. 7

Figure 2. Data analysis methods

of Vosviewer (refer to Figure 4), all items are circled and Findings and Discussions
represented by their respective labels. The size of the cir-
cles and labels (font size) is determined by the weight of
Publication Trends
items, that is, the number of occurrences of subject terms In bibliometric analysis, the developmental trend of a
in the title and/or abstract of publications. The higher scientific field is often represented by the quantity of
the occurrences of subject terms in the title and/or publications (Goyal & Kumar, 2021). In this regard,
abstract of publications, the larger the circles and labels Figure 3 shows the historical trajectory of publication
of the items. It also shows the strength of relation quantity in the research field of smartphone addiction.
between subject terms. Specifically, the higher the num- The number of publications in the field of smartphone
ber of co-occurrence of two subject terms in the title and/ addiction has been increasing over the years. From just
or abstract of publications, the stronger the link strength 2 articles published in 2011 to 268 articles published in
and the thicker the line connecting the two subject terms. 2021. With regard to the growth trajectory of publica-
More importantly, Vosviewer uses different colors to tion quantity, this study has observed that the growth
represent different research cluster. Accordingly, the of publication quantity in the period between 2011 and
more colors, the more research clusters are identified 2017 was slow and accelerated after 2017. Furthermore,
(Van Eck & Waltman, 2011). These are particularly rele- it was seen to have sharp surge starting from 2020 and
vant for the objective of identifying the research themes recorded highest number of publications in 2021 with
in the existing smartphone addiction literature. 286 publications.
8 SAGE Open

Figure 3. Number of publications

Although Figure 3 has shown that there was a drop of publications and the potential good destinations for the
publication quantity in 2022, it should not be considered submission of research paper in that scientific field.
as an actual research output reduction in the literature of The 924 articles considered in this study were published
smartphone addiction because the literature search for in 361 journals. Table 2 shows the top 15 journals with
this study was conducted on August 15, 2022 and thus highest number of total publications (TP), along with
the publication quantity in Figure 3 could not represent their total citations (TC) accumulated, average citation
the actual overall publication quantity in 2022 in smart- received per publication (TC/TP), and Scimago Journal
phone addiction literature. However, building on the Ranking (SJR; Quartile). These journals have been
overall upward growth trend observed for the publication considered as the hotspot of publications related to
quantity in the literature of smartphone addiction, this smartphone addiction. Specifically, 394 articles were
study is optimistic that the publication quantity in 2022 is published by the top 15 journals, which had accounted
likely to surpass the publication quantity in 2021 and con- approximately 43% of the total outputs in the litera-
tinue growing in the coming years. Furthermore, it is also ture of smartphone addiction.
worth to point out that the majority of the articles were In which, International Journal of Environmental
published in the period between 2020 to 2022 August, Research and Public Health has published 55 articles in
which accounts for approximately 67% of total publica- total. It was followed by Computers in Human Behavior
tions in smartphone addiction literature. These have and Journal of Behavioral Addictions, which have respec-
reflected that smartphone addiction is a relatively new tively published 54 and 40 articles. These have led them
and emerging field of research that has recently started to to be identified as the three most productive journal in
gain popularity and expected to gain more and more the literature of smartphone addiction. Remarkably,
attention from academic community in the coming years. although International Journal of Environmental Research
and Public Health was the journal with highest number of
publications (TP), its total citations (TC = 383) and aver-
Most Productive and Influential Journals age citation per publication (TC/TP = 6.96) were much
Building on the claim that ‘‘different journals are most lower than those of Computers in Human Behavior
influential in different subareas’’ (Baumgartner & (TC = 4,120; TC/TP = 76.30) and Journal of Behavioral
Pieters, 2003, p. 123), researchers have argued that it is Addictions (TC = 2,664; TC/TP = 66.60). These have
essential to identify the publication outlets or journals reflected the fact that the articles published by
that are productive and influential in a specific scien- International Journal of Environmental Research and
tific field because it provides a guide for researchers Public Health have received significant lesser attention
especially those new to that scientific field about which from researchers than those published by Computers in
journals to target for effective search of related Human Behavior and Journal of Behavioral Addictions.
Wong et al. 9

Table 2. Top 15 Productive and Influential Journals.

Average citation
Total publication Total citations per publication SJR ranking
Journals (TP) (TC) (TC/TP) (Quartile)

1 International Journal of Environmental 55 383 6.96 Q1

Research and Public Health
2 Computers in Human Behavior 54 4,120 76.30 Q1
3 Journal of Behavioral Addictions 40 2,664 66.60 Q1
4 Current Psychology 35 193 5.51 Q2
5 International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction 32 433 13.53 Q1
6 Addictive Behaviors 27 806 29.85 Q1
7 PLoS One 27 2,398 88.81 Q1
8 Frontiers in Psychology 25 334 13.36 Q1
9 Frontiers in Psychiatry 23 321 13.96 Q1
10 Children and Youth Services Review 19 369 19.42 Q1
11 Cyberpsychology Behavior and Social Networking 14 278 19.86 Q1
12 Perspectives In Psychiatric Care 13 92 7.08 Q2
13 BMC Psychiatry 10 448 44.80 Q1
14 Psychiatry Investigation 10 58 5.80 Q2
15 Social Science Computer Review 10 428 42.80 Q1

Another journal worth mentioning was PLoS One. Table 3 lists the top 15 authors with highest number of
Despite its lower total publications (TP) than the jour- total publications (TP), along with their accumulated
nals highlighted above, it has accumulated considerable total citations (TC), and average citation received per
number of total citations (TC = 2,398). Also, it was sur- publication (TC/TP). These authors have been consid-
prisingly found to have the highest average citation per ered as the top dogs in the literature of smartphone
publication (TC/TP = 88.81) among the top 15 journals addiction.
publishing smartphone addiction research, which make Among them, Elhai, J.D. has published a total of 36
it one of the most notable journals in the literature of articles (TP). It was followed by Griffiths, M.D. and
smartphone addiction. Furthermore, apart from the four Kim, D.J., which have respectively published 33 and 27
journals particularly highlighted above, the other jour- articles (TP). These have made them to be identified as
nals listed in Table 2 were all worth noting. Specifically, the most productive authors in the literature of smart-
despite their relatively low total publications (TP), total phone addiction. Furthermore, the articles written by
citations (TC), and average citation per publication (TC/ these authors were also widely cited in the existing litera-
TP), they were still ranked at Quartile 1 or 2 in Scimago ture of smartphone addiction. Specifically, Elhai, J.D.
Journal Ranking (SJR). Accordingly, they have been has accumulated a total of 2,040 total citations (TC). It
widely deemed as reliable and established journals that was followed by Kim, D.J. and Griffiths, M.D., which
publish smartphone addiction research. Building on the have respectively accumulated 2,023 and 943 total cita-
discussions above, this study argues that the top 15 jour- tions (TC). These have led them to be identified as the
nals listed in Table 2 could all be deemed as good plat- most influential authors in smartphone addiction litera-
forms for the search of publications related to ture. Remarkably, Griffiths, M.D. has obtained 28.58
smartphone addiction and good destinations for the sub- average citation per publication (TC/TP). It was much
mission of research output related to smartphone lower than those of Elhai, J.D. (TC/TP = 56.67) and
addiction. Kim, D.J., (TC/TP = 74.93). It has reflected the fact that
the articles written by Griffiths, M.D. have received sig-
nificantly lesser attention than those written by Elhai,
Most Productive and Influential Authors J.D. and Kim, D.J. However, this study argues that these
Researchers have claimed that it is valuable to identify may not be sufficient to cause any doubt to the promi-
the most productive and influential authors in a scientific nent status of Griffiths, M.D. in the literature of smart-
field because it helps ‘‘equipping prospective scholars phone addiction.
with valuable information to reach out and collaborate Another two authors worth highlighting were Hall,
with established and trending scholars in the research B.J. and Cho, H. Despite their lower number of publica-
field’’ (Donthu et al., 2021, p. 290). The 924 articles con- tions (TP), they have respectively accumulated 979 and
sidered in this study were authored by 3,927 researchers. 749 total citations (TC). Also, their average citation per
10 SAGE Open

Table 3. Top 15 Productive or Influential Authors.

Average citation
Total publication Total citation per publication
Authors Current affiliation Country (TP) (TC) (TC/TP)

1 Elhai, J.D. The University of Toledo United States 36 2,040 56.67

2 Griffiths, M.D. Nottingham Trent University United Kingdom 33 943 28.58
3 Kim, D.J. The Catholic University of Korea South Korea 27 2,023 74.93
4 Rozgonjuk, D. University of Tartu Estonia 19 620 32.63
5 Montag, C. Ulm University Germany 17 638 37.53
6 Lin, C.Y. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Hong Kong 13 455 35.00
7 Choi, J.S. Seoul National University College of Medicine South Korea 12 516 43.00
8 Wang, P. Renmin University of China China 12 326 27.17
9 Yang, H. Tianjin Normal University China 11 374 34.00
10 Hall, B.J. New York University Shanghai China 10 979 97.90
11 Pakpour, A.H. Jönköping University Sweden 10 366 36.60
12 Cho, H. Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital South Korea 9 749 83.22
13 Choi, I.Y. The Catholic University of Korea South Korea 9 148 16.44
14 Billieux, J. University of Lausanne Switzerland 8 359 44.88
15 Chen, I.H. Qufu Normal University China 8 297 37.13

publication (TC/TP) were surprisingly found to be the publications may be good starting points for them to
largest (TC/TP = 97.90) and second largest (TC/ quickly build up the knowledge needed to do research in
TP = 83.22) among the top 15 authors that have pub- that scientific field (Kumar et al., 2022). Table 4 lists the
lished in smartphone addiction literature. These have top 15 publications with highest number of total cita-
reflected that the articles written by them have received tions (TC) among the 924 publications considered in this
great attention in the literature of smartphone addiction, study. Among these publications, one publication partic-
laying their prominent status in the literature of smart- ularly worth highlighting was ‘‘Is smartphone addiction
phone addiction. really an addiction?’’ (rank 9 in Table 4). It has exten-
Apart from the five authors particularly highlighted sively discussed the concept of smartphone addiction
above, the other authors listed in Table 3 were also and questioned whether the behavior ‘‘persistent smart-
worth noting. Although their overall contribution may phone use despite the recognition that it can cause nega-
not be comparable to the five authors previously high- tive life consequences’’ should be conceptualized as an
lighted, these authors have published considerable quan- addiction or just a problematic way of smartphone use.
tity of articles (TP) and also obtained sizeable number of This publication has been considered to be highly rele-
total citations (TC) as well as average citation per publi- vant for researchers especially those new to the field of
cation (TC/TP). Accordingly, they have also been widely smartphone addiction because it helps in understanding
deemed as established and trending authors in the exist- how smartphone addiction has been conceptualized in
ing literature of smartphone addiction. Building on the the existing literature (Harris et al., 2020).
discussions above, this study argues that the top 15 Another four of them (rank 1, 3, 10, and 15 in Table 4)
authors in the existing literature of smartphone addiction have focused on developing and validating the measure-
(as listed in Table 3) could all be considered as the top ment scales for smartphone addiction. The scales devel-
choices to reach out for collaborations and/or seek oped and validated in these publications were
advice regarding smartphone addiction research. ‘‘‘‘Smartphone Addiction Scale Short Version (SAS-SV),
‘‘Smartphone Addiction Scale’’ (SAS), Smartphone
Addiction Inventory (SPAI), and Smartphone Addiction
Most Influential Publications Proneness Scale (SAPS) respectively. These scales have
Researchers have repeatedly pointed out that the most been widely used to measure smartphone addiction in the
cited publications are usually the seminal publications or existing literature (Harris et al., 2020; Yu & Sussman,
publications that can provide rich and/or trustworthy 2020), which could be partly reflected by the sizeable
information needed to do research in a particular scien- number of citations (TC) they have accumulated (refer to
tific field (Gao et al., 2020). Accordingly, it has been Table 4 for the exact number of total citations). Among
argued that it is valuable for researchers especially those the four scales previously highlighted, the total citations
new to a particular scientific field to identify the most (TC) of ‘‘Smartphone Addiction Scale Short Version
cited publications in that scientific field because these (SAS-SV) and ‘‘Smartphone Addiction Scale’’ (SAS) were
Wong et al. 11

Table 4. Top 15 Top Cited Publications.

Authors Title Total citation (TC) Core focus

1 Kwon, Kim, et al. (2013) The smartphone addiction scale: 582 Scale development/validation
Development and validation of a
short version for adolescents
2 Demirci et al. (2015) Relationship of smartphone use 572 Negative Consequences
severity with sleep quality,
depression, and anxiety in university
students
3 Kwon, Lee, et al. (2013) Development and Validation of a 570 Scale development/validation
Smartphone Addiction Scale (SAS)
4 Van Deursen et al. (2015) Modeling habitual and addictive 528 Risk/protective factors
smartphone behavior: The role of
smartphone usage types, emotional
intelligence, social stress, self-
regulation, age, and gender
5 Samaha and Hawi (2016) Relationships among smartphone 524 Negative Consequences
addiction, stress, academic
performance, and satisfaction with
life
6 Haug et al. (2015) Smartphone use and smartphone 391 Risk/protective factors
addiction among young people in
Switzerland
7 Elhai et al. (2016) Fear of missing out, need for touch, 341 Risk/protective factors
anxiety and depression are related to
problematic smartphone use
8 Duan et al. (2020) An investigation of mental health status 333 Negative Consequences
of children and adolescents in China
during the outbreak of COVID-19
9 Panova and Carbonell (2018) Is smartphone addiction really an 260 Conceptualization
addiction?
10 Lin et al. (2014) Development and validation of the 250 Scale development/validation
Smartphone Addiction Inventory
(SPAI)
11 Bian and Leung (2015) Linking Loneliness, Shyness, 243 Risk/protective factors
Smartphone Addiction Symptoms,
and Patterns of Smartphone Use to
Social Capital
12 Jeong et al. (2016) What type of content are smartphone 236 Risk/protective factors
users addicted to?: SNS vs. games
13 Matar Boumosleh Depression, anxiety, and smartphone 223 Risk/protective factors
and Jaalouk (2017) addiction in university students—A
cross sectional study
14 Wolniewicz et al. (2018) Problematic smartphone use and 212 Risk/protective factors
relations with negative affect, fear of
missing out, and fear of negative and
positive evaluation
15 Kim et al. (2014) Development of Korean Smartphone 209 Scale development/validation
Addiction Proneness Scale for youth

the highest and second highest respectively. Furthermore, particularly worth noting for researchers when comes to
they have also been found to be the two most frequently the measurement of smartphone addiction.
used scales to measure smartphone addiction in the exist- The others have focused on the identification of the
ing literature (Yu & Sussman, 2020). Building on these, risk/protective factors of smartphone addiction (rank 4,
this study argues that the four scale previously discussed 6, 7, 11, 12, 13, and 14 in Table 4) and negative conse-
especially ‘‘Smartphone Addiction Scale Short Version quences associated with smartphone addiction (rank 2, 5,
(SAS-SV) and ‘‘Smartphone Addiction Scale’’ (SAS) are and 8 in Table 4). These publications have accumulated
12 SAGE Open

considerable number of citations (TC) and been widely After going through the aforementioned processes,
considered as highly influential publications in their only 48 terms were finally retained for science mapping
respective field of investigations (e.g., risk/protective fac- analysis. Three research clusters were identified among
tors; negative life consequences; scale development/vali- these terms that include (1) protective/risk factors, neuro-
dation; conceptualization) in the existing literature of biological mechanisms, and intervention, (2) prevalence
smartphone addiction. Building on the discussions and negative consequences, and (3) scale development/
above, this study argues that these publications could all psychometric properties test, which were respectively rep-
be considered as good starting points for researchers resented by red, green, and blue color in the network
especially those new to the field of smartphone addiction visualization of this study (refer to Figure 4). Other key
to quickly pick up the necessary knowledge for smart- takeaways from the network visualization of this study
phone addiction research. were that, in the title and abstract of publications, terms
related to protective/risk factors (e.g., depression, anxiety,
stress), negative consequences (e.g., sleep problem, aca-
Major Research Themes demic performance, physical activity), and prevalence
Co-word analysis was carried out through Vosviewer on appear much more often and co-occur much more often
the title and abstract of publications to uncover the with the term ‘‘smartphone addiction (thus higher link
major research themes in the existing literature of smart- strength in Vosviewer) than those related to intervention
phone addiction (RQ5). With full counting method, it and neurobiological mechanism (as illustrated in Table 5).
has initially identified a total of 13,837 terms from the These could also be reflected by the fact that, in the
title and abstract of the 924 publications considered in network visualization of this study (refer to Figure 4), (1)
this study. Although it is ideal to provide as much infor- the size of the circles and labels (font size) of terms
mation on research themes as possible, it is not always related to protective/risk factors, negative consequences,
practically viable or manageable to visualize a very large and prevalence was much bigger than the terms related
number of terms and their relationship (Zupic & Čater, to intervention and neurobiological mechanism (occur-
2015). Accordingly, this study has only considered terms rences) and (2) the lines connecting terms related to pro-
with a minimum five occurrences in the title and abstract tective/risk factors, negative consequences, and
of 924 publications considered in this study and revealed prevalence to the term ‘‘smartphone addiction’’ were
1,572 terms meeting this threshold. much thicker than those of intervention and neurobiolo-
It should be noted that terms with same meaning may gical mechanism (co-occurrences and/or link strength).
have different forms of representation. Accordingly, as These have all reflected that (1) studies identifying pro-
advised by Zupic and Čater (2015) and Donthu et al. tective/risk factors, negative consequences, and preva-
(2021), this study has represented all terms with same lence have thus far dominated the existing literature of
meaning under one label in order to avoid inaccurate smartphone addiction and (2) the investigation of neuro-
analytical findings. For examples, the terms ‘‘problematic biological mechanisms underlying smartphone addiction
smartphone use,’’ ‘‘compulsive smartphone use,’’ ‘‘smart- and formulation/test of intervention programs have
phone overuse,’’ ‘‘addictive smartphone use,’’ and ‘‘exces- received relatively scant attention from researchers. In
sive smartphone use’’ were all represented by order to provide more insights into the research themes
‘‘smartphone addiction.’’ The terms ‘‘depression severity,’’ of the existing literature of smartphone addiction, each
‘‘depression symptom,’’ ‘‘depression symptom severity’’ of the previously identified research clusters was further
and ‘‘depressive disorder’’ and ‘‘depressive symptom’’ elaborated in the following subsections.
were all represented by ‘‘depression.’’ Furthermore, this
study has also aggregated the terms usually perceived to Protective/Risk Factors, Neurobiological Mechanisms, and
be under same umbrella. For examples, the terms ‘‘life Intervention. The first focal point of this research cluster
stress,’’ ‘‘academic stress,’’ ‘‘interpersonal relationship was to identify protective/risk factors of smartphone
stress,’’ ‘‘job stress,’’ ‘‘social stress,’’ ‘‘perceived stress’’ addiction. In this regard, in the existing literature, various
were all aggregated as ‘‘stress.’’ The terms ‘‘sleep distur- individual/contextual factors were examined as the pro-
bance,’’ ‘‘sleeping disorder,’’ ‘‘sleep disorder,’’ ‘‘sleep inter- tective/risk factors of smartphone addiction such as psy-
ference,’’ ‘‘insomnia disorder,’’ ‘‘insomnia symptom,’’ chological characteristics (e.g., stress, anxiety, depression,
‘‘insomnia,’’ ‘‘poor sleep quality,’’ ‘‘poorer sleep quality,’’ self-esteem; Elhai et al., 2017; J. L. Wang et al., 2020),
and ‘‘poor sleep’’ were all aggregated as ‘‘sleep problem.’’ individual traits (e.g., personality trait, impulsivity, self-
In addition, this study has also excluded numerous terms control; Contractor et al., 2017; Horwood & Anglim,
that are too general and cannot reflect research themes in 2018; Servidio, 2021), and interpersonal relationship (e.g.,
the literature of smartphone addiction such as ‘‘univer- family relationship, peer relationship; Ouyang et al., 2020;
sity,’’ ‘‘potential,’’ ‘‘personal,’’ ‘‘number,’’ and ‘‘missing.’’ P. Wang et al., 2017). For examples, Peng et al. (2022)
Wong et al. 13

Figure 4. Term co-occurrences network visualization.

has found that perceived stress is positively related to (increased activation in orbitofrontal cortex) and weaker
smartphone addiction (risk factor) and self-control nega- loss sensitivity (reduced activation in anterior cingulate
tive moderate the relationship (protective factor). cortex). These may explain why smartphone addicts
On the other hand, researchers have also devoted their often (1) show more preference to immediate gratifying
attention to the neurobiological mechanisms underlying experiences (e.g., using smartphone for gaming) than
smartphone addiction (Horvath et al., 2020; Seo et al., long term gains (e.g., using the time spent gaming to per-
2020; West et al., 2021). In this regard, researchers have form tasks associated with long term career success) and
argued that addictive behavior is mainly characterized by (2) unable to inhibit their impulse to use or continue
an imbalance between increasing urges/desires to engage using smartphone for immediate gratification, even they
in certain behavior and decreasing inhibitory control have already recognized that it can cause adverse
over these urges/desires (Brand et al., 2019; Dong & consequences.
Potenza, 2014). Accordingly, some studies have applied These studies have been repeatedly highlighted to be
neuro imaging techniques (e.g., electro-encephalography highly valuable because they provide insights into how to
or structural/functional magnetic resonance imaging) to reduce the likelihood/incidence of smartphone addiction
record the structure or activity of brain regions associ- (Busch & McCarthy, 2021; Horvath et al., 2020; Osorio-
ated with inhibitory control and reward/loss sensitivity Molina et al., 2021), which can serve as inputs for the for-
(e.g., anterior cingulate cortex and orbitofrontal cortex) mulation and development of intervention/corrective stra-
in the settings of experimental task (e.g., go/no-go task/ tegies of smartphone addiction. Apart from these,
lowa gambling task; Horvath et al., 2020; West et al., building on the risk/protective factors and neurobiological
2021). For examples, in the setting of gain and loss gues- mechanisms identified by previous studies, a stream of
sing tasks, Horvath et al. (2020) has found that smart- studies has focused on identifying/developing intervention
phone addicts demonstrate stronger reward sensitivity programs for smartphone addiction such as cognitive
14 SAGE Open

Table 5. Research Clusters and Their Corresponding Terms.

Link strength with

Occurrences ‘‘smartphone addiction’’ Topical focus

Cluster 1 (red): Protective/risk factors, neurobiological mechanisms, and intervention

Depression 591 2,865 Protective/risk factors
Anxiety 579 2,927 Protective/risk factors
Stress 309 1,645 Protective/risk factors
Personality trait 307 1,770 Protective/risk factors
Fear of missing out 168 1,137 Protective/risk factors
Self-control 160 876 Protective/risk factors
Self-esteem 111 646 Protective/risk factors
Interpersonal relationship 102 513 Protective/risk factors
Impulsivity 82 293 Protective/risk factors
Exercise intervention 53 362 Intervention
Rumination 49 348 Protective/risk factors
Boredom proneness 44 322 Protective/risk factors
Cognitive behavioral therapy 28 90 Intervention
Alexithymia 21 71 Protective/risk factors
Alienation 19 108 Protective/risk factors
Digital intervention 14 63 Intervention
Inhibitory control 13 51 Neurobiological mechanisms
Attentional control 12 47 Neurobiological mechanisms
Negative affectivity 9 67 Protective/risk factors
Reward sensitivity 7 43 Neurobiological mechanisms
Attentional bias modification 5 25 Intervention

Cluster 2 (green): Prevalence and negative consequences

Sleep problem 211 1,020 Negative consequences
Prevalence 168 819 Prevalence
Academic performance 130 528 Negative consequences
Physical activity 90 437 Negative consequences
Musculoskeletal problem 125 350 Negative consequences
Fatigue 39 198 Negative consequences
Suicidal ideation 41 95 Negative consequences
Obesity 15 93 Negative consequences
Hypertension 9 72 Negative consequences
Physical health 12 44 Negative consequences
Breast cancer 10 40 Negative consequences
Quality of life 10 19 Negative consequences
Headache 5 11 Negative consequences
Functional gastrointestinal disorders 5 5 Negative consequences

Cluster 3 (blue): Scale development/psychometric properties test

Concurrent validity 19 31 Scale development/psychometric properties test
Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) 70 132 Scale development/psychometric properties test
Content validity 14 57 Scale development/psychometric properties test
Convergent validity 14 40 Scale development/psychometric properties test
Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) 30 79 Scale development/psychometric properties test
Factor analysis 17 37 Scale development/psychometric properties test
Factor structure 40 68 Scale development/psychometric properties test
Internal consistency reliability 64 117 Scale development/psychometric properties test
Reliability 77 145 Scale development/psychometric properties test
Test-retest reliability 9 14 Scale development/psychometric properties test
Unidimensionality 11 15 Scale development/psychometric properties test
Validity 89 188 Scale development/psychometric properties test

behavioral therapy (Lan et al., 2018; Seo et al., 2020), well as testing their effectiveness on treating/correcting
exercise intervention programs (e.g., taichi, basketball, smartphone addiction. For examples, Lan et al. (2018)
badminton, dance, run, and bicycle; Choi et al., 2020; has highlighted that cognitive behavioral therapy can help
Xiao et al., 2021), and digital intervention (e.g., smart- treating smartphone addiction because it improves the
phone addiction management system; Lee et al., 2022) as ability to inhibit the impulse to continue using
Wong et al. 15

smartphone when users recognize its associated adverse or disturbing to human daily life (Busch & McCarthy,
consequences and found that cognitive behavioral therapy 2021).
has successfully reduced the score of Mobile Phone Taken together, with the aim to identify (1) whether
Internet Addiction Scale (MPIAS) in their intervention smartphone addiction is an issue that really exists among
group. the community and (2) whether smartphone addiction is
Taken together, with the aim to provide information threatening or disturbing to human daily life, this
about how to reduce the likelihood/incidence of smart- research cluster focuses on examining the prevalence of
phone addiction, this research cluster focuses on (1) identi- smartphone addiction and its associated adverse conse-
fying the risk/protective factors, (2) neurobiological quences. These have been particularly highlighted to be
mechanism underlying smartphone addiction, and (3) valuable because they provide evidences that may sup-
intervention/corrective measures of smartphone addiction. port the idea that smartphone addiction is already a pub-
lic health issue that deserves more attention and reflect
the need to develop intervention measures for smart-
Prevalence and Negative Consequences. The first focal
phone addiction (Olson et al., 2022).
point of this research cluster was on identifying the pre-
valence of smartphone addiction. Through the use of
smartphone addiction measurement scales such as smart- Scale Development and Psychometric Properties. This
phone addiction scale-short version (SAS-SV; Kwon, research cluster mainly focuses on developing scales to
Lee, et al., 2013), malay version of smartphone addiction measure smartphone addiction and examining their psy-
scale (SAS-M; Ching et al., 2015), or smartphone addic- chometric properties. In this regard, since smartphone
tion scale (SPAS; Bian & Leung, 2014), numerous studies addiction has been generally conceptualized as a beha-
have examined the prevalence of smartphone addiction vioral addiction, studies developing scale to measure
in order to identify whether smartphone addiction is an smartphone addiction have often transposed the criteria
issue that really exists among the community (Bian & established to diagnose other addictive behavior (e.g.,
Leung, 2014; Lim et al., 2021; Okasha et al., 2021). gambling, substance use) to measure smartphone addic-
Although these studies have usually found that smart- tion (e.g., tolerance, withdrawal, relapse, preoccupation,
phone addiction is prevalent across countries especially difficulty in control; D. Kim et al., 2014; Kwon, Lee,
among emerging adults and adolescents, it should be et al., 2013; Lin et al., 2014). After establishing the cri-
noted that the source of their data was unitary, or more teria to measure smartphone addiction, these studies
specifically, their data was collected only from a specific have conducted factor analysis (exploratory and/or con-
group of objects. For examples, Cha and Seo (2018), firmatory factor analysis) to examine the psychometric
Lim et al. (2021), and Okasha et al. (2021) have respec- properties of the scales developed by them (content valid-
tively collected data only from middle school students in ity, convergent validity, discriminant validity, internal
South Korea, patients with depression in Malaysia, and consistency reliability, test-retest reliability) in order to
university students in Egypt. Accordingly, the findings find out how well these scales measure or reflect smart-
generated by these studies may not be sufficient to sup- phone addiction (D. Kim et al., 2014; Kwon, Lee, et al.,
port the idea that smartphone addiction is a global pub- 2013; Lin et al., 2014).
lic health concern. These have partially explained why Although most of the existing measurement scales
there has been continuous effort among researchers in have demonstrated adequate reliability and validity in
the field of smartphone addiction to identify the preva- the original studies that have developed them, the source
lence of smartphone addiction with survey data collected of data involved in their development was unitary
from samples with different characteristic around the (Kwon, Lee, et al., 2013; Lin et al., 2014). For examples,
world (Olson et al., 2022). the survey data involved in the development of smart-
Another focus of this research cluster was on the iden- phone addiction scale-short version (SAS-SV) and
tification of adverse consequences associated with smart- smartphone addiction inventory (SPAI) was respectively
phone addiction. In this regard, studies have examined collected only from high school students in South Korea
the relationship of smartphone addiction with a broad (Kwon, Lee, et al., 2013) and university students in
range of adverse consequences such as poor academic/ Taiwan (Lin et al., 2014). In this regard, researchers have
job performance (Hessari & Nategh, 2022; Nayak, 2018), repeatedly highlighted that samples with different char-
poor sleep quality (Chen et al., 2017), reduced physical acteristics (e.g., country, culture, age, education level,
activity (S. E. Kim et al., 2015), fatigue (Sert et al., 2019), occupation) may interpret and/or respond differently to
and musculoskeletal problems (Soliman Elserty et al., same set of questions and thus a particular measurement
2020). The main motivation of these investigations was scale may demonstrate different psychometric properties
to identify whether smartphone addiction is threatening in different contexts (Harris et al., 2020).
16 SAGE Open

These have partly explained why numerous studies to do smartphone addiction research. Apart from these,
have validated the existing measurement scales of smart- this study has also identified and elaborated on the
phone addiction with survey data collected from samples research themes that exist in the current literature of
with different characteristics (e.g., country, occupation, smartphone addiction. It is expected to provide research-
developmental stage) and found inconsistent factor struc- ers a one-stop overview of what research has already
ture (Sfendla et al., 2018; Vintilă et al., 2021). For exam- been done in the existing smartphone addiction literature
ples, smartphone addiction scale (SAS) was developed (e.g., protective/risk factors, neurobiological mechan-
based on the survey data collected from Korean partici- isms, and intervention; prevalence and negative conse-
pants and found to have six-factor structure (Kwon, Lee, quences; scale development/psychometric properties test)
et al., 2013). However, it was found to have seven-factor and enable researchers to position the contribution of
structure in Turkish context (Demirci et al., 2014), five- their own research against the established research
factor structure in Romanian context (Vintilă et al., themes. Furthermore, the co-word analysis conducted in
2021), and five-factor structure in Brazilian context our review has also revealed that (1) studies identifying
(Andrade et al., 2021). protective/risk factors, negative consequences, and pre-
To conclude, this clusters mainly focuses on develop- valence have thus far dominated the existing literature of
ing scales to measure smartphone addiction and identify smartphone addiction and (2) the investigation of neuro-
whether these scales are reliable and valid forms of biological mechanisms underlying smartphone addiction
smartphone addiction measurement. and formulation/test of intervention programs have
received relatively scant attention from researchers.
These have enabled scholars to gain a rough insight of
Conclusion the knowledge gaps in the current literature of smart-
This study is among the first to provide holistic review of phone addiction and identify a general direction for
smartphone addiction literature through bibliometric future research. Taken together, this study provides a
analysis. Firstly, this study has examined the publication one-stop platform for researchers (especially those new
trend of smartphone addiction literature through track- to the field) to quickly and largely grasp the information
ing the historical trajectory of its publication quantity. It needed to conduct smartphone addiction research (i.e.,
has revealed that the number of publications has been publication trends, top journals that publish smartphone
increasing in the period of 2011 to 2022. However, the addiction research, prominent authors, seminal/highly
growth was slow in the period of 2011 to 2017 and only cited publications, existing research themes).
accelerated after 2017, which was subsequently pushed Despite the contribution to the literature of smart-
to its peak in 2021 (286 publications). This study has also phone addiction, this study is not without limitations.
highlighted that most of the articles (approximately Firstly, the dataset for bibliometric analysis in this study
67%) were published in the period between 2020 and is retrieved only from Scopus. Although it is among the
2022. These have together reflected that smartphone largest scientific databases, it may not contain all publi-
addiction is a relatively new and emerging field of cations related to smartphone addiction. Secondly, this
research that has recently started to gain popularity, study has only considered journal article published in
which is expected to stay relevant and gain more and English. Accordingly, this study is likely to miss out some
more attention from academic community in the coming valuable publications such as papers listed only in other
years. databases (e.g., web of science), non-English publica-
Through the use of various performance indicators tions, conference proceedings, and/or books chapters.
(e.g., total number of citation/publication, citation per Lastly, co-word analysis identifies research themes
publication), this study has also identified the (1) most only through clustering ‘‘terms’’ that co-occur in the title
productive/influential journals, (2) most productive/ and/or abstracts of publications (e.g., smartphone addic-
influential authors, and (3) the most influential publica- tion and risk factor, smartphone addiction and protec-
tions in the literature of smartphone addiction. These are tive factor, smartphone addiction and psychometric
respectively expected to reveal (1) the journals that can property) and does not provide in-depth information
be targeted for effective search of publications related to regarding the full content of publications (Nagariya
smartphone addiction and/or submission of research et al., 2020). It has implied that the information (e.g.,
output related to smartphone addiction, (2) the promi- topical focus, research design, sample characteristic, sam-
nent/established authors that can be targeted for colla- pling method, data collection/analysis process, findings)
boration and/or trustworthy advice in smartphone needed to identify the specific limitations of existing stud-
addiction research, and (3) the publications that can ies and specific areas that require further scholarship in
serve as good starting points for researchers or prospec- the literature of smartphone addiction was not extracted.
tive researchers to quickly pick up the knowledge needed In such case, this study may not be able to provide clear
Wong et al. 17

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