Phone Addiction Statistics: How Common Is It?

The headline numbers

• About 27% of people worldwide meet the criteria for smartphone addiction on validated questionnaires — the pooled estimate from 504 studies of more than 2.1 million people in 64 countries.
• Smartphone addiction is the most common form of digital addiction in that analysis, ahead of social media (17.4%), internet (14.2%) and gaming addiction (6.0%).
• Among children and young people, the median prevalence of problematic smartphone use is 23.3% — roughly 1 in 4.
• Young people with problematic smartphone use had about 3 times the odds of depression and anxiety and 2.6 times the odds of poor sleep quality — an association, not proof of cause.
• Rates are rising: scores increased over time in most of 24 countries studied, and a 64-country analysis found an upward trend over two decades that worsened sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Where it is highest and lowest

Across 24 countries — 33,831 people aged 15 to 35, in studies from 2014 to 2020 — scores were highest in China and Saudi Arabia, followed by Malaysia, Brazil, South Korea, Iran, Canada and Turkey. They were lowest in Germany and France. The authors link the differences partly to culture: higher scores tended to appear in countries with tighter social norms and more formal social and family obligations.

The 64-country meta-analysis found the same broad pattern by region and income: higher rates in the Eastern Mediterranean region and in low- and lower-middle-income countries.

What these numbers measure

Smartphone addiction is not an official diagnosis. Studies measure it with self-report questionnaires such as the Smartphone Addiction Scale and count everyone above a cut-off score. Different scales and cut-offs give different rates — one reason estimates range so widely between studies. The figures describe how common the pattern is in surveys, not how many people would receive a clinical diagnosis.

Where do you stand?

Our free phone addiction test uses ten questions adapted from the short version of the Smartphone Addiction Scale (SAS-SV), the same scale behind much of the research above. It takes two minutes and gives you a concrete next step, not a diagnosis.

Sources

• Meng SQ, Cheng JL, Li YY, et al. Global prevalence of digital addiction in general population: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, 93, 102128 (2022).
• Sohn SY, Rees P, Wildridge B, Kalk NJ, Carter B. Prevalence of problematic smartphone usage and associated mental health outcomes amongst children and young people: a systematic review, meta-analysis and GRADE of the evidence. BMC Psychiatry, 19, 356 (2019).
• Olson JA, Sandra DA, Colucci ÉS, et al. Smartphone addiction is increasing across the world: A meta-analysis of 24 countries. Computers in Human Behavior, 129, 107138 (2022).

Page last reviewed: September 2026. We update the figures when new meta-analyses are published.