“Smartphone Addiction Model”; A Grounded Theory Analysis

In recent years, many attempts have been made to study phenomena such as book / reading addiction, television addiction, excessive use of computer games, and more recently, Internet game disorder and its related term, Internet addiction, but the subject of Smartphone addiction is a new topic in the early stages of theorizing. The purpose of this study is to develop a model of smartphone addiction. In this research, the qualitative method of data theorizing of the foundation (grounded theory) has been used. To identify and define the concepts related to smartphone addiction, domestic and foreign research literature in this field was reviewed during the last 20 years (2000-2020). In the open coding stage, 127 concepts were extracted and classified into 28 categories and 9 macro categories. In axial coding, smartphone addiction is the main phenomenon and the central processes (include biological, psychological, motivational, emotional and social processes), the causal conditions for the emergence of smartphone addiction. Structural factors can be presented as contextual factors and individual-environmental factors as intervention conditions around this model. User strategies, model strategy and functional damages, consequences and final output of smartphone addiction are considered. In the selective coding stage, a detailed model of smartphone addiction was presented. Finally, research suggestions and strategies to prevent smartphone addiction were presented.