Directing smart phone use through the self-nudge app one sec

Abstract

Over 6 billion individuals have a smartphone and most of them use it multiple times every day. Research has found various associations of smartphone use with a range of physical, psychological and performance dimensions. It seems that negative relationships are attributed to mindless use of smartphones while deliberate consumption even shows positive associations. Here, we test one sec, an app that is installed by the user in order to reduce the mindless use of a certain “target app” (e.g., social media) on the smartphone. One sec works by using friction, namely, when attempting to open the target app, it opens a pop-up first, which includes a short breathing exercise. We tested the app by collecting behavioral user data about those opening attempts for 280 participants, who were using one sec for six weeks, and conducted two surveys before and after the intervention span. One sec helped participants reduce their target app usage in two ways. First, on average in 36% of the times participants attempted opening a target app, they closed that app again after they saw the one sec pop-up. Second, over the course of six weeks, users did reduce attempting to open the target app in the first place,, resulting in 37% less overall attempts. In sum, one sec decreased the actual opening of target apps by 57% after six consecutive weeks. Participants reported spending less time with their apps and being happier with their app use after six weeks of using one sec. Importantly, users seemed to also use their apps more deliberately by self-reporting their app consumption to be less problematic.

Old strategies, new environments: Reinforcement Learning on social media

“…Together, such affordances can maintain habitual behaviour on social media. Some social media interventions thus aim to disrupt these affordances, for example by intervening when Apps are opened to add friction to the social media experience and thus decrease context stability (76).…”