The mediating role of smartphone addiction on the relationship between personality and young drivers’ smartphone use while driving

Young drivers touch their smartphone screens for a number of reasons (to access text messages, Internet, social media, games, music, videos, and more), but doing so increases the likelihood of accidents. This study discusses the relationship between personality traits and the use of smartphones by 221 young drivers (64.7% male) aged 17–22 years. It focuses on the mediation effect of smartphone addiction on the relationship between personality and smartphone use while driving, using an objective measure—the number of times young drivers touch their smartphones, measured by a unique smartphone monitoring application. Results show that participants touched their smartphones on average 1.71 times per minute while driving. They also indicate a negative relationship between participants’ openness to experience and smartphone use while driving, a positive relationship between both extraversion and neuroticism and smartphone use while driving, and a mediation effect of smartphone addiction on the relationship between neuroticism and smartphone use while driving. This is the first study to identify relationships between psychological variables and smartphone use while driving based on a real-time objective measurement. The ability to predict such use may lead to a personalized intervention that will reduce addiction to the smartphone and help drivers refrain from using smartphones while driving.