Concepts Clarification and Differentiation between Smartphone Addiction and Compulsive Internet Use Based on Diagnostic Investigation on Two Scales

Abstract

Smartphone addiction, Internet addiction, online gaming addiction, communication addiction disorder and social network addiction are widely discussed topics nowadays. However, there is lack of distinction between different types of these technology-based addictions. The aim of this study is to investigate whether two commonly used instruments measure two different concepts as they intend to. Therefore, we made a diagnostic analysis of the Smartphone Addiction Scale (SAS-SV) for adolescents and the Compulsive Internet Use Scale (CIUS). We surveyed 96 adolescents aged between 14 and 15 years through online questionnaire. The results of the statistical analysis show that the two scales are highly correlated (r=.98, p≤.001). By using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) we stepwise reduced both instruments to their main loading cores to get insights in the phenomena they measure. The reduced scales stayed highly correlated. However, a combined model based on both reduced scales implies very good model fit and high reliability. We argue that both instruments measure almost the same phenomena and propose an alternative scale based on the reduction of the SAS-SV and CIUS scales -- the Compulsory Mobile Internet Use Scale (CMIU). Further validation of this scale is needed. The main limitation of the study is its relatively small convenience sample. Further limitations and implications are discussed.