Analysis of behavioral characteristics of smartphone addiction using data mining

Abstract

In 2016, the number of mobile phone subscriptions worldwide had surpassed the total world population; moreover, the number of smartphone addicts is increasing each year. Thus, the objective of this study is to analyze smartphone addiction by considering the differences between smartphone usage patterns as well as cognition. Our proposed method involves automatically collecting and analyzing data through an app instead of using the existing self-reporting method, thereby improving the accuracy of data and ensuring data reliability from respondents. Based on the results of our study, we observed that there is a significant cognitive bias between the self-reports and automatically collected data. As a result of applying data mining, among the six criteria out of the total 24 items of the questionnaire, the higher the "recurrence" item, the higher the addiction; further, "forbidden" item 1 had the largest effect on addiction. In addition, the input variables that have the greatest influence on the high-risk users were the number of times the screen was turned on and real-use time/cognitive-use time. However, the amount of data and time of smartphone usage were not related to addiction. In the future, we will modify the app to obtain more accurate data, based on which, we can analyze the effects of smartphone addiction, such as depression, anxiety, stress, self-esteem, and emotional regulation, among others.