Passively sensing smartphone use in teens with rates of use by sex and across operating systems

Abstract

AbstractYouth screen media activity is a growing concern, though few studies include objective usage data. Through the longitudinal, U.S.-based Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, youth (mage = 14; n = 1415) self-reported their typical smartphone use and passively recorded three weeks of smartphone use via the ABCD-specific Effortless Assessment Research System (EARS) application. Here we describe and validate passively-sensed smartphone keyboard and app use measures, provide code to harmonize measures across operating systems, and describe trends in adolescent smartphone use. Keyboard and app-use measures were reliable and positively correlated with one another (r = 0.33) and with self-reported use (rs = 0.21–0.35). Participants recorded a mean of 5 h of daily smartphone use, which is two more hours than they self-reported. Further, females logged more smartphone use than males. Smartphone use was recorded at all hours, peaking on average from 8 to 10 PM and lowest from 3 to 5 AM. Social media and texting apps comprised nearly half of all use. Data are openly available to approved investigators (https://nda.nih.gov/abcd/). Information herein can inform use of the ABCD dataset to longitudinally study health and neurodevelopmental correlates of adolescent smartphone use.