The project ‘‘Development of a Korean Smartphone Addiction
Proneness Scale’’ carried out by National Information Society
Agency aimed to shed light on the concept and perception of
smartphone addiction. In the project, each subject group was
assessed, and the subjects were divided into the high-risk group,
the low- to medium-risk group, and the general group. According
to the results report, the smartphone addiction rates of the highrisk
group and of the low- to medium-risk group were 2.2 and
9.3%, respectively, in adolescents, and 1.0 and 6.7%, respectively,
in adults [11]. This indicates that the smartphone-related
problems are too critical to be neglected. The project, however,
provided only a simple assessment, differentiating between
dependence and abuse, based on psychiatric diagnosis. As such,
there is an urgent need to develop a diagnostic scale for
smartphone addiction.