Smartphone Addiction Test (SAS-SV)

The SAS-SV is a 10-question short form of the Smartphone Addiction Scale (SAS), a 33-item scale that Kwon and colleagues published earlier in 2013 in PLOS ONE. That first scale was tested in 197 people aged 18 to 53 and came with no cut-off. To build a short form for teenagers, seven experts, including psychiatrists, nurses and psychologists, picked 10 of the 33 items for content validity.

The authors tested the short form in 540 second-year middle school students from two schools in Kangwon province, South Korea (343 boys and 197 girls, average age 14.5), in April and May 2013.

Internal consistency was high (Cronbach's alpha of 0.911), and SAS-SV scores correlated strongly with the original 33-item scale (r = .958). Boys averaged 23.75 and girls 27.89.

The cut-offs came from interviews. Clinical psychologists talked with 150 randomly chosen students (90 boys, 60 girls) and judged 15 boys and 16 girls to be addicted, based on tolerance, withdrawal and daily-life disturbance. Against that judgment, a cut-off of 31 gave boys a sensitivity of 0.867 and a specificity of 0.893 (AUC 0.963). A cut-off of 33 gave girls 0.875 and 0.886 (AUC 0.947). Positive predictive values were 0.619 for boys and 0.737 for girls.

Later studies give a mixed picture. In 451 Brazilian adolescents, the best cut-off was also 33, but accuracy was lower (AUC 0.739, sensitivity 65.37%, specificity 72.26%). In 3,211 adults in Hong Kong, researchers applied the developers' cut-offs of 31 for men and 33 for women and found 38.5% with problematic use.

The published cut-offs are 31 for boys and 33 for girls, taken from teenagers. The page doesn't ask your sex or age, so it shows where your score sits against both. The labels are ours; the authors only sorted students into addicted or not.

The cut-offs come from one school sample. The authors list their own limits: two schools in one region of South Korea, more boys than girls, and no clinical setting. The psychologists rated 15 boys and 16 girls as addicted, so each sensitivity figure rests on about 15 people. The authors say the scale can flag higher risk and isn't designed to diagnose addiction.

"Addiction" isn't a formal diagnosis here. A 2023 editorial lists problematic smartphone use among "putative" behavioral addictions, a different category from gambling disorder and gaming disorder, which it counts as recognized. A 2018 review argued that "problematic use" is the better label, and that screening instruments of this kind aren't valid for diagnosis and can produce many false positives. The 10 questions also don't measure hours of use. Adults weren't the target group: the authors' cut-offs come from students who averaged 14.5 years old, and we found no adult-specific ones from them. One item is updated: item 8 says “social media” where the published item names Twitter and Facebook.

A score at or above the cut-off is a prompt to look at how the phone fits into your day. Notice when it takes over sleep, work, school or time with people, and change one thing, such as where the phone sleeps. If you retake the test after a few weeks, you'll see whether the number moved.

If phone use is costing you sleep, work or relationships, or you feel anxious or low when you can't use it, consider talking with a therapist or doctor. Our guides to phone addiction and doomscrolling cover what pulls people in and what to try.

More on this topic: Phone addiction: why it pulls you in, News anxiety and doomscrolling, Revenge bedtime procrastination, Sleep test.

Your answers are scored in your browser and aren't sent or saved anywhere. Close the page and they're gone.

• Kwon, Kim, Cho and Yang, PLOS ONE, 2013 (open access): The SAS-SV paper: sample, item selection, reliability, ROC cut-offs, limitations and the CC BY license. Full text and Appendix S1 (the ten items and six answer labels) read.
• Kwon, Lee, Won et al., PLOS ONE, 2013 (PubMed): The original 33-item SAS and its 197-person sample. Abstract only.
• Andrade et al., Addictive Behaviors, 2020 (PubMed): 451 Brazilian adolescents; ROC results for the cut-off of 33. Abstract only.
• Luk et al., Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 2018 (PMC): 3,211 Hong Kong adults; shows the adolescent cut-offs applied to adults and the 38.5% prevalence. Open access full text.
• Panova and Carbonell, Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 2018 (PMC): Review of whether smartphone addiction is an addiction; comments on diagnosis status and screening instruments. Dated 2018.
• Chatzittofis and Kim, Frontiers in Psychiatry, 2023 editorial (PMC): Describes problematic smartphone use as a putative behavioral addiction. A short editorial, not a review of the evidence.