Sports and exercise-related smartphone use is antagonistic to hedonic use in regular exercisers: A cross-sectional study examining the roles of exercise frequency and duration

Background: Hedonic smartphone use has been associated with dependence and addiction studied under the umbrella term Problematic Smartphone Use (PSU). Research usually explores total screen time as an index of PSU. A few studies suggest that exercise is inversely related to smartphone use time. However, it is unknown which primary characteristics of exercise behavior are related to more moderate smarthone use. Furthermore, the purpose of smartphone use, such as hedonic use associated with PSU versus utilitarian use, was not tested in the sports and exercise contexts. Hedonic use generally means playing with the smartphone for joy, distraction, and satisfaction. Utilitarian use implies practical and valuable use. There is a conjecture that sports involvement may foster utilitarian use through increased involvement in sports-related information-seeking, goal-setting, and self-monitoring. Methods: Therefore, we examined whether weekly exercise frequency, workout duration, and perceived exercise intensity relate to total daily smarthone and hedonic use and whether this relationship is mediated by sports-related utilitarian device use. We tested regularly exercising adults (n = 360, 132 males, M-age = 39.0 +/- 9.8, M-weekly exercise = 5.8 +/- 1.9) who volunteered for this study and provided demographic information about their exercise habits and smartphone use. Results: The results revealed that all exercise parameters mediated the total daily smartphone use, with perceived exercise intensity being a negative predictor. Further, exercise frequency and duration (but not intensity) positively predicted sports-related smartphone use, which inversely predicted hedonic use. Conclusion: These results suggest that exercise parameters directly relate to daily smartphone use, which completely mediates hedonic use. These findings may partially account for the frequently reported inverse relationship between regular exercise and PSU by suggesting that the connection is mediated via sports-related smartphone use.