Moving beyond addiction: An attachment theory framework for understanding young adults' relationships with their smartphones

Abstract

With the increasingly ubiquitous use of smartphones in modern culture, particularly among young adults, recent research has focused on the behaviors, characteristics, and effects of smartphone use, with the evaluation of addictive features largely dominating work in this area. Given concerns around the application of the medicaladdiction model to such a novel, quasi-normalized, and potentially functional dependence on smartphones, this paper explores the possibility of an alternative framework for understanding university students' relationships with their smartphones (i.e., that of attachment theory rather than addiction). Thus, this paper includes a review of the current state of the literature on problematic smartphone use and addiction before examining the use of an attachment theory framework to understanding this phenomenon. Specifically, the use of smartphones as attachment targets, characterized by the key features of attachment relationships (i.e., proximity seeking, secure base, safe haven, and separation anxiety), is explored and potential practical and theoretical implications of this approach are discussed. Through conceptualizing young adults' relationships with their smartphones within an attachment theory framework, this paper provides a well-understood, meaningful, and biologically adaptive model with which to understand some of the alarming behaviors that have emerged alongside increasing rates of smartphone use, such as texting while driving, sleeplessness, and social isolation.adult attachment, attachment theory, mobile phone attachment, object attachment, problematic smartphone use, smartphone addiction, smartphone attachment, university student smartphone use

Smartphones as personal digital archives? Recentring migrant authority as curating and storytelling subjects

“…Alongside possible functional dependencies on material affordances of the many functionalities of smartphones, following the attachment theory framework (Parent and Shapka, 2020), for our interviewees in the face of major life challenges, feeling the material device in one’s pocket, offers reassurance to be in the proximity of a stable ‘secure base’ and possible ‘safe haven’ (ibid., p. 180). Losses of these valued artefacts may thus exacerbate ontological anxieties.…”

The sources of the many faces of consumer smartphone attachment: A value‐in‐use perspective

“…Although smartphones represent a key element in consumers' lives, consumer research has paid little attention to the relationship between consumers and their smartphones (Berlo et al., 2020; Melumad & Pham, 2020; Sultan et al., 2009). The concept of smartphone attachment can yield important insights into this relationship (Melumad & Pham, 2020; Nie et al., 2020; Parent & Shapka, 2019). Compared to other material objects, the smartphone accompanies its user throughout the day.…”

“…This knowledge might be decisive for understanding peoples' responses in the many situations in which smartphones already occupy or will occupy a central position. The existing literature has repeatedly emphasized that relationships to objects trigger important behaviors or behavior‐related responses (Bowlby, 1969; Parent & Shapka, 2019). Against this background, the current research aims to understand consumers' relationship with their smartphones.…”

Attachment anxiety and solitude in the age of smartphones.

“…Further, smartphones may themselves function as attachment objects, such that one’s tendencies in relationships with other people are likely to bear out in their relationship with their smartphone (Parent & Shapka, 2020). Particularly for those high in attachment anxiety, attachment to the smartphone appears to reflect attachment style to people, as demonstrated by both proximity-seeking and separation distress behaviors (Konok et al, 2016).…”