Time Spent on Mobile Apps Matters: A Latent Class Analysis of Patterns of Smartphone Use among Adolescents

Abstract

The aims of the present study are: (1) to determine classes of adolescents with homogeneous patterns of smartphone or social media use; and (2) to examine the level of distress across the empirically derived profiles. Three hundred and forty adolescents (Mage = 15.61, SD = 1.19; 38.2% females) participated in a cross-sectional survey. Participants provided objective trace data on time spent on smartphones and applications, as well as self-reported social media addiction, social media use intensity, online social comparison, emotion dysregulation, and psychological distress. Latent class analysis (LCA) with total smartphone use categorized participants into three classes. Participants in Class 3 (19%) showed a more impaired functioning profile, with a tendency towards social media addiction and greater levels of distress. LCAs with the amount of time devoted to specific applications are more heterogeneous, and results showed that heavy use of social media apps was not consistently connected to the most impaired psychosocial profiles. Although the amount of mobile screen time can be a characteristic of problematic users, the link between social media usage and an adolescent’s psychological characteristics is mixed. More research is needed to explore the interplay between mobile screen time and social media usage among adolescents.