Researchers in Turkiye started the new year by releasing a pre-publication study in the journal BMC Psychiatry in hopes of answering the question: How many people with mental health disorders also have smartphone addiction?

The answer is that it’s much more of a problem for people with certain disorders than others. Based on a study of 707 patients and 162 healthy controls, the researchers found the following percentages with social media addiction:

• 44.6% obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
• 35.7% anxiety disorders (AD)
• 30.9% depressive disorders (DD)
• 26.3% bipolar disorders (BD)
• 25.3% healthy control group 
• 20.8  schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD)

These scores are based on the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale, a six-item, self-reported questionnaire that uses a five-point Likert scale from “very rarely” to “very often” to assess:

• salience
• mood modification
• tolerance
• withdrawal
• conflict
• relapse

Designed to measure Facebook addiction, the Bergen Scale has been adapted to measure dependency on any smartphone application or computer application. It asks such generic questions as “Has your usage had negative effects on your job or family?” and “Have you been unsuccessful in limiting your usage?”

In the Turkish study, 57.4% of participants were female and 42.6% were male. Their average age was 37 — rather elderly for a study of social media addiction. The study included at least 100 patients diagnosed with each disorder, so it wasn’t like 600 people with anxiety and two with bipolar.

The researchers stressed the unusual numbers at both the bottom and top of the social media addiction (SMA) scale for mental health disorders:

Regression analyses indicated that OCD and BD were independently associated with SMA, even after controlling for anxiety and depression symptoms. In addition, while SMA severity was positively associated with anxiety and depression in most groups, no such associations were observed in the OCD and SSD groups.

The researchers encourage more and better screening for SMA among patients with other mental health disorders, especially anxiety disorders (AD) and OCD:

SMA represents a clinically relevant issue in individuals with mental disorders, particularly in OCD and AD. The substantially higher rates observed in these groups highlight the need for increased clinical awareness and routine assessment of problematic social media use in psychiatric settings.

The question of causation is not addressed in the research. That is, there is no determination made as to whether OCD leads to SMA or vice versa. However, the prevalence of SMA among people diagnosed with OCD is nearly double that of the control group.

The Turkish researchers stress the need for longitudinal studies to track SMA among people with mental health disorders to see if scores correlate over time.

A comparable study of smartphone addiction among university students with mental health disorders conducted at the University of Jordan has a much lower average age than the Turkish study. The study was also published in BMC Psychiatry back in 2023.

More than 2,300 university students were recruited to complete the survey. Among those, 87.2% were female and only 12.8% male. Also, 71.1% of participants were between the ages of 21 and 23. Screening showed the following breakdown concerning the mental health of participants:

• 11% No mental health issues
• 14% Mild mental health disorder
• 16% Moderate mental health disorder
• 59% Severe mental health disorder

A severe mental health disorder was defined as a score over 30 on the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10), a 10-item self-reported questionnaire measuring anxiety and depression over the previous month.

Smartphone addiction was assessed with a 10-item questionnaire that appears to have been designed by the researchers. More than half (56.7%) of participants had a score of 30 or above on the 60-point scale, reflecting “a smartphone addiction state.”

Once again, the correlation between severe mental health disorders and smartphone addiction is not causation. Still, the Jordanian researchers say, “the overuse of social media should be treated as a public health concern.”

Written by Steve O’Keefe. First published January 8, 2026.

Sources:

“Social media addiction in five major mental disorders: a cross-sectional comparative study,” BMC Psychiatry, January 2, 2026.

“Smart phone addiction and its mental health risks among university students in Jordan: a cross-sectional study,” BMC Psychiatry, November 7, 2023.

Image Copyright: Anton Vierietin.