Consideration of method for restricting use of smartphone based on forced character entry

Abstract

This paper considers a method for restricting the use of a smartphone based on forced character entry. The long-range goal of this research is to suppress mobile phone addiction. Previous methods to achieve this goal have generally been shotgun approaches (e.g., shutting down all of the application programs on the phone based on an established time limit) and have been designed for youngster users. The concept of this research is to consider a method for lowering the motivation for using the phone instead of a shotgun approach. We expect a user to eventually abstain voluntarily from using the phone as a result of this method. This paper focuses on video and game contents. These are major contents that are browsed using a phone. This study implemented a character entry screen that was displayed on the phone based on an established time limit and investigated lowering the user's motivation for using the phone.