What They Did
This study was part of a randomized controlled trial of an
app to help people self-regulate their social media use. The authors looked at
the effects of the app on self-report measures of well-being, positive and
negative affect, and stress level. Many of the participants were psychology
students in Germany, but some were from other countries or in other occupations.
Although the participants downloaded the app for the study,
it was inactive for the first week to provide a baseline for all participants.
At the end of the week, the participants answered the questionnaires on
well-being, affect, and stress. During the second week, half the participants
had the app active, and the other half served as a control. At the end of that
week, the participants took the questionnaires again. For the third week, the
experimental participants chose whether to continue using the app, and at the
end of the third week, all participants again answered the questionnaires.
The authors did not find a significant change in well-being,
negative affect, or stress level for either group between the beginning and end
of the study. Both groups showed an improvement in positive affect, and at the
end of the study, the experimental group had higher scores for well-being and
lower scores for negative affect and stress level than the control group. The
researchers suggest that their sample size may have been too small to reach
statistical significance for a small effect and the study too short to produce
a larger effect.
Further Exploration
The app is called WeIlspent, and I like the way the it works
according to the paper. Users choose how frequently they want to be reminded
about their intentions for social media use, and they also list activities
they’d like to do instead. At the specified frequencies, the app reminds the
user of their intention and suggests an alternative activity, but the user
still decides what to do.
When I went to look
for more information, though, the main page for the company seemed to target
other app companies rather than smartphone users (see https://www.wellspent.so/.) The Wellspent
page on the Apple store does seem to be more user-focused (see https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wellspent-replace-scrolling/id1643980844),
but I found it off-putting to first find marketing to help other app companies get
more attention from users.
I don’t have a smartphone and I stopped using social media a
few years ago, so I don’t need the app. When I got into scrolling patterns in
the past, though, I do think a full-screen interruption of the sort described
would have been helpful. Part of what kept me scrolling was that I rarely
encountered a natural endpoint. I might not have been particularly interested
in what I was reading, but I hoped to find the “perfect” post that would make
me feel satisfied and provide a sense of closure. When I did find something
interesting, though, I could instead be motivated to seek more. I wonder if social media holds attention
through variable reinforcement, but that’s a rabbit hole for another day!
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Social-media-3758364_1920.jpg
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