SAS-1: A single-item version of the Smartphone Addiction Scale

The digital age has brought increasing concern about the negative effects of smartphones, which has led to dozens of measures of problematic smartphone use. Almost all of these measures, however, may be too long for contexts such as large-scale surveys. Here, we introduce a single-item measure that probes agreement with the statement: ‘I am addicted to my smartphone’. Across 10,786 participants aged 5 to 89 from 149 countries, 37% agreed or strongly agreed with this statement. Their agreement strongly correlated (r = .65 to .70) with scores on the short version of the Smartphone Addiction Scale (SAS-SV), the most widely used scale in the field. Younger women had the highest scores on both measures and tended to somewhat underestimate their addiction on the single-item scale. Overall, our results suggest that most people have an accurate self-assessment of their problematic smartphone use. This new 1-item scale (SAS-1) can therefore serve as a brief measure of problematic smartphone use when space is limited.