(IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 9, No. 9, 2018 A Controlled Environment Model for Dealing with Smart Phone Addiction Irfan Uddin a , Adeel Baig b , Abid Ali Minhas b a Institute of Computing, Kohat University of Science and Technology, Kohat, Pakistan b College of Engineering , Al Yamamah University, Saudi Arabia Abstract—Smart phones are commonly used in most parts of the world and it is difficult to find a society that is not affected by the smart phone culture. But the usage of smart phone is crossing the limit of being used as a facility towards high level of abnormal dependency on the phone. This dependency can reach to the point where we have no longer control on the over-use and hence the negative impacts it can cause to our lives. The worst situation is that people do not even consider that this dependency is actually a type of addiction and we need to find some solutions to deal with it. In this research paper, we identify symptoms that show the existence of smart phone addiction and demonstrate that this addiction has an effect on the quality and even quantity of people’ lives and it can ultimately affect the whole society. We propose solutions to deal with smart phone addiction and propose the design of a smart phone application to reduce the level of abnormal dependency on smart phones. Keywords—Smart phone addiction; Abnormal use of smart phone; Healthy society; Dealing with smart phone addiction I. I NTRODUCTION Smart phones have become one of the most omnipresent communication devices within the last decade. These devices allow people to connect “any-time”, “anywhere” and with “anybody”, with the added benefit of mobility and portability. A smart phone operates not only as a mobile phone but as a computer, mp3 player, video player, internet browser, book reader, gaming device, entertaining device, etc. [1], [2]. People are rapidly adapting smart phones which can be attributed to many factors such as portability, declining costs, everything at one place and rich features. It is not possible to find a society that is exempted from smart phone culture. With the advancement of technology, smart phones are becoming smarter every generations. In a short time span we find many new applications and features added to smart phones that allow us to perform different functions suitable to our lifestyle [3]. For example, the development of Siri in Apple’s phones have allowed people to perform different tasks by just talking to the phone. Thumb impression features have allowed to add security in different operations. Payments through NFC have reduced the dependency on credit cards, and many other features. We do not know what features we will have in smart phones after four or five years. Smart phones are rapidly adapted, but do they have any negative social impacts? For example, the most common negative consequences of smart phone use include the dangers of driving while using smart phone. This overuse can be termed as smart phone addiction and it can cause detrimental damage both to individuals and to society [1]. Addicted people have a physical or psychological dependence on an entity which disable their functionality within society. Smart phone addicted people have a high dependence on theirs phone and may not able to perform simple tasks without using their smart phone. This situation can be termed as smart phones but dumb people. The study of dependence on smart phones to an extent that the individual’s social life is effected has gained little academic attention. The dependency on the smart phones is so much integrated in our lives that people do not even recognize that they are addicted to an entity and they need to find some remedies. Smart phones are extraordinary devices. We can commu- nicate with each other without time and space restrictions. However, people feel that they can not live a normal life without it [2]. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to provide some means of making an empirical distinction between normal and problematic smart phone use. This study states that if problematic smart phone use exists, and what activities lead to the abnormal dependency on smart phones. We attempt to identify how the problematic use of smart phone has an effect on the quality or even quantity of our lives. We propose solutions to deal with the problematic use of smart phones through environmental or behavioral programming. We want to defend ourselves against smart phone addiction by using smart phones. Therefore, we propose a model that can automatically determine the abnormal usage pattern of the smart phone and enable or disable different features to get the user out of the danger zone of smart phone addiction. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In section II we give definition of addiction and the symptoms of smart phone addiction. We demonstrate how this addiction can affect the quality and/or quantity of ours lives in section III. We present related works in section IV and present a case study that demonstrates the dependency on smart phones in sec- tion V. We identify activities on the smart phones that can possibly lead to addiction and present some solutions that advices the user to deal with the addiction in section VI. We present the proposed model which can automatically detect the abnormal behavior of the user on the smart phone and enable or disable different notifications, messages, email or other applications in section VII and conclude the paper in section VIII. II. THE SIGNS OF SMART PHONE ADDICTION An Addiction can generally be defined as the repeated use of a substance despite the negative consequences suffered by the addictive individual [4]. Traditionally addiction has been related to only substance addiction [5]. Examples of sub- stance addiction include smoking, drugs, medication, alcohol www.ijacsa.thesai.org 577 | Page