Comparative Study of User Experience with Digital Well-Being Apps for Problematic Smart Device Use: A Comparison of Gamification, Self-Control, and Parental-Control Mechanisms in Taiwan

Problematic smart device usage has recently become a pressing societal concern. In response, digital well-being applications (apps) have been increasingly deployed to help users monitor, regulate, and reduce device engagement. However, existing research focuses on single-app categories, whereas comparative evaluations across distinct behavioral intervention mechanisms remain scarce. Hence, this study systematically identified and analyzed available and actively maintained digital well-being apps in major app stores in Taiwan and classified them into three theoretically grounded intervention types: gamified, self-control, and parental control. User reviews for six representative apps, selected to ensure cross-mechanism comparability, were collected from Google Play and the Apple App Store, yielding 15,414 valid comments. Inductive thematic content analysis was employed to explore the relationship between comment topics and emotions. Keyword analysis provided insights into users’ experiences and system-related issues. Significant inter-category differences in users’ experiences were observed. The gamified and self-control apps demonstrated higher proportions of positive sentiment than the parental-control apps. For parental-control apps, negative comments were primarily associated with trust, privacy, and parent–child conflict. Across categories, technical issues, including excessive battery drain, background process instability, and over-restrictive default settings, were frequently identified and associated with perceived usability concerns. This study offers empirically grounded insights into mechanism-informed patterns observed in the sampled apps and how design logic shapes user experience and acceptance in digital well-being interventions for smart device overuse. The findings provide app-specific and mechanism-informed recommendations for enhancing perceived usability and long-term user acceptance and inform the development of ethically grounded, theory-aligned digital well-being interventions.