Introduction

The aim of this paper is to present a review of the medical studies on problematic mobile phone use (PMPU) and determine whether cell phone addiction really exists. The Medline database was reviewed for medical articles on PMPU. The following phrases have been used for this purpose: “cell-phone addiction”, “problematic mobile phone use”, “smartphone dependence”, “excessive mobile phone use”. The authors focused on medical articles published in 1979, 1983 and between 1992 and 2018 that fulfil the following criteria: 1) review papers, 2) retrospective and prospective studies, 3) clinical reports on epidemiology, risk factors, symptomatology, neuroimaging, comorbidity with other mental disorders (including other behavioural addictions) as well as therapy of PMPU.

Review of literature

It is advisable that scientific literature avoid the term “cell phone/smartphone addiction” in favour of more adequate terms like: “problematic smartphone use”, “excessive mobile phone use” or “declared mobile phones dependence”. Moreover, it should be remembered that the use of mobile phones and smartphones is associated with numerous negative consequences like somatic complications or car accidents caused by the use of phones during driving or as a pedestrian. Another important issue is also the comorbidity of PMPU with other mental disorders. The aspect of cause-and-effect relationship of PMPU and mental disorders remains an open question. Research on this topic should undoubtedly be continued.