Effects of wakeful resting versus social media usage after learning on the retention of new memories

Abstract

Summary Communication and information sharing via social media platforms is a common and popular activity. The majority of existing studies indicate that social media usage has detrimental effects on learning and memory. However, it is an open question as to whether social media usage affects memory even after learning. To test this, healthy young adults learned and immediately recalled a vocabulary list. Subsequent to recall, participants either wakefully rested for 8 min or used social media for 8 min. A delayed recall test took place after the wakeful resting condition and the social media condition and again after 1 day. Our results showed that social media usage, compared with wakeful resting, had detrimental effects on memory performance over both retention intervals. We assume that social media usage interfered with memory consolidation of learned vocabularies and suggest that learners opt for wakeful resting over social media usage as a learning‐break activity.

Duration, frequency, and time distortion: Which is the best predictor of problematic smartphone use in adolescents? A trace data study

“…In general, smartphone use may obstruct everyday routines and specific activities such as studying/learning, working, and offline social interactions [75]. Scales measuring PSU pick up this aspect and include items such as "Having a hard time concentrating in class, while doing assignments, or while working due to smartphone use" or "Constantly checking my smartphone so as not to miss conversations between other people on Twitter or Facebook" [23].…”

Effects of Various Behaviours in the Break Times between Learning

“…Thus, we thought that a degree of concentration in group of "fly-tapping game" was caused by the continuation of the work as Qi et al [11]. Furthermore, although the task of this study cannot be directly compared because it is a mathematical calculation, we considered that strong external stimuli while the break has some influence on learning as shown by Martini et al [12]. Thus, we thought that "doing nothing" showed good results on average.…”

“…In addition, an influence of using social media during breaks on memory learning is attracting attention. Martini et al have investigated effects of using social media immediately after learning [12]. In learning of this study, native German students memorise pairs of Irish and German words.…”