Smartphones have become deeply embedded in everyday life, offering clear benefits for communication, productivity, and daily organisation. At the same time, their constant availability has been linked to problematic smartphone use (PSU), a pattern of use marked by impaired control, salience, mood modification, and continued use despite negative consequences. Although commonly described as “smartphone addiction,” PSU has no formal diagnostic criteria in DSM-5 or ICD-11, and whether it constitutes a behavioural addiction remains debated.

Nonetheless, PSU is consistently associated with a broad range of mental-health and behavioural correlates, including depression, anxiety, sleep problems, ADHD symptoms, loneliness, and alcohol use. Many multidimensional instruments have been developed to assess PSU, but their length limits their usefulness in settings where survey burden is a

constraint, such as large epidemiological surveys, primary care screening, and rapid clinical intake. The present study evaluates whether a single dichotomous functional/impairment item can serve as a brief screener for PSU. Using a cross-sectional secondary analysis of a United States MTurk sample (N = 495), the item’s criterion validity and diagnostic accuracy were examined against a validated multidimensional instrument, the 26-item Smartphone Use Problems Identification Questionnaire (SUPIQ), and against a profile of mental health correlates (depression, anxiety, ADHD symptoms, loneliness, and sleep quality).