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. 2015 Oct 28;10(10):e0139004.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0139004. eCollection 2015.

Beyond Self-Report: Tools to Compare Estimated and Real-World Smartphone Use

Sally Andrews  1 , David A Ellis  2 , Heather Shaw  3 , Lukasz Piwek  4
Affiliations

Beyond Self-Report: Tools to Compare Estimated and Real-World Smartphone Use

Sally Andrews et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Psychologists typically rely on self-report data when quantifying mobile phone usage, despite little evidence of its validity. In this paper we explore the accuracy of using self-reported estimates when compared with actual smartphone use. We also include source code to process and visualise these data. We compared 23 participants' actual smartphone use over a two-week period with self-reported estimates and the Mobile Phone Problem Use Scale. Our results indicate that estimated time spent using a smartphone may be an adequate measure of use, unless a greater resolution of data are required. Estimates concerning the number of times an individual used their phone across a typical day did not correlate with actual smartphone use. Neither estimated duration nor number of uses correlated with the Mobile Phone Problem Use Scale. We conclude that estimated smartphone use should be interpreted with caution in psychological research.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Barcode of smartphone use over two weeks.
Black areas indicate times where the phone was in use and Saturdays are indicated with a red dashed line. Weekday alarm clock times (and snoozing) are clearly evident.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Percentage of uses categorised by duration.
This illustrates the highly skewed nature of smartphone usage.
Fig 3
Fig 3. Number of checks in 0.5 second bins across all participants over a 15 second period.
Three spikes of checking duration are visible.
Fig 4
Fig 4. Participants’ mean number of phone uses (a), mean total duration (b), and mean duration length (c) at different times of day.
Error bars show 1 SE from the mean.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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