As digital media infiltrate an increasingly greater proportion of our lives, concern about the possibility of various forms of technology addictions has emerged. For technology addiction, researchers have developed a variety of self-reported scales in areas such as Internet, smartphones, videogames, social network sites (SNS) or television. However, no uniform criteria or definition exists for technology addiction. Utilized dimensions of technology addiction, to measure specific outcomes, lack a conceptual standard. Therefore, linkages between technology areas dimensions have not been examined in a broader way by the research community, in order to develop a uniform technology addiction scale. In this regard, firstly, a theoretical model was developed in order to extract common technology dimensions. Secondly, a systematic literature review in the areas of Internet, smartphone, video games and SNS was conducted in order to extract the dimensions used. To identify relevant studies, nine databases (GoogleScholar, ScienceDirect, PubMed, EmeraldInsight, Wiley, SpringerLink, ACM, iEEE and JSTOR) were searched, producing 4698 results, and 50 studies met the inclusion criteria. Thirdly, the developed theoretical model was utilized in order to determine the dimension in each of the identified scales. Based on analysis of the dimensional distributions, the findings suggest that there are common dimensions across areas of technology such as “compulsive use” and “negative outcomes” but also differences in dimensions across areas such as “social comfort” and “mood regulation”, which are more used in the area of SNS. Moreover, new dimensions such as “cognitive absorption” or “utility and function loss" for technology addiction were extracted, which should be considered as these have not yet been researched in a broader way. In addition, no gold standard for the conceptual criteria or definition for technology addiction has been developed yet.

The Collatz conjecture is a number theoretical problem, which has puzzled countless researchers using myriad approaches. Presently, there are scarcely any methodologies to describe and treat the problem from the perspective of the Algebraic Theory of Automata. Such an approach is promising with respect to facilitating the comprehension of the Collatz sequence’s "mechanics". The systematic technique of a state machine is both simpler and can fully be described by the use of algebraic means. The current gap in research forms the motivation behind the present contribution. The present authors are convinced that exploring the Collatz conjecture in an algebraic manner, relying on findings and fundamentals of Graph Theory and Automata Theory, will simplify the problem as a whole.