Postural Balance in Young Adults with Smartphone Addiction: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Background: Smartphones have become central to how young people communicate, study, and unwind, and it is often assumed that the postures and habits that come with heavy use carry a physical cost alongside the psychological one. Balance depends on the visual, vestibular, and somatosensory systems working together, and while it is a plausible target for this kind of harm, it has rarely been tested directly against a graded measure of addiction severity.

Objective : This study set out to test whether smartphone addiction severity is associated with impaired static, dynamic, and reactive balance in young adults.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 285 participants aged 18–35 years were recruited through stratified random sampling. Smartphone addiction was measured with a validated scale (range 10–60) and used to split participants into mild (score ≤28, n = 95), moderate (29–45, n = 98), and severe (≥46, n = 92) tertiles. Balance was assessed with the Berg Balance Scale (BBS, static), the Star Excursion Balance Test (SEBT, dynamic), and the Push-and-Release Test (reactive). Associations were tested with Pearson correlation (Spearman as a sensitivity check, given non-normal distributions on Shapiro-Wilk testing) and one-way ANOVA with Bonferroni-corrected pairwise comparisons; significance was set at p < 0.05.

Results: Mean addiction score was 36.09 ± 14.70. Mean BBS was 38.65 ± 10.46, SEBT 79.10 ± 11.52%, and Push-and-Release 2.14 ± 1.39. Addiction score correlated negligibly with BBS (r = -0.024, p = 0.693), SEBT (r = -0.024, p = 0.685), and Push-and-Release (r = -0.056, p = 0.345). ANOVA across addiction tertiles was non-significant for BBS (F(2,282) = 0.28, p = 0.754) and Push-and-Release (F(2,282) = 0.82, p = 0.443). SEBT showed a significant but small and non-monotonic group difference (F(2,282) = 4.48, p = 0.012, η² = 0.031), driven by the moderate group scoring higher than the severe group (p = 0.007, Bonferroni-corrected); mild and severe groups did not differ (p = 0.685). Neither age nor BMI was related to BBS score.

Conclusion: In this sample, smartphone addiction severity showed no meaningful association with static or reactive balance, and only a small, non-dose-dependent difference in dynamic balance. The data do not support the idea that smartphone addiction meaningfully impairs balance in healthy young adults, and the null hypothesis is retained for the primary outcomes. Larger, longitudinal studies with objective usage tracking are needed before any causal or dose-response relationship can be inferred.