Where does the time go? An experimental test of what social media displaces and displaced activities’ associations with affective well-being and quality of day

Abstract

Drawing from media displacement theory, this article explores which activities are displaced when individuals spend time on social media. Community and undergraduate participants ( N = 135) were randomly assigned to five conditions: no change in social media use, or abstinence from social media for 1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, or 4 weeks. Participants completed a daily diary measuring how they spent time each day, affective well-being, and quality of day for 28 days. The results indicate that abstinence from social media increased time spent engaged in seven activities, primarily browsing the Internet, working, childcare, and cooking/cleaning. In addition, associations among psychosocial outcomes and the displaced activities were examined. Time spent working, sleeping, and cooking/cleaning were negatively associated with affective well-being and quality of day. On days participants used social media, minutes of use were negatively associated with quality of day. The results suggest that social media primarily displaces unpleasant or neutral activities.

Digital Overuse and Subjective Well-Being in a Digitized Society

“…While people may have difficulties in reporting accurate total time or frequency estimates (Scharkow, 2019), they are the experts on their own attitudes and perceptions. A second indicator of digital overuse is the feeling that Internet use regularly and perhaps subtly pushes other—and according to one’s personal ideals, more important—things aside (see Hall, Johnson, & Ross, 2019). The concept of PDO thus foregrounds conflicts in the relative importance of everyday activities competing for time.…”

Temporal ambivalences in smartphone use: Conflicting flows, conflicting responsibilities

“…Time is a fundamental structuring mechanism in interactions between individuals, social figurations, and societal institutions. It refers to shared standards enabling coordinated activity, but also to subjective experiences of how time progresses, or what is valuable uses of time (Hall et al, 2018; Jordheim, 2014). In this article, we consider time a universal, yet personal resource to manage, and approach it through media and technology as part of the everyday.…”

“…In this article, we consider time a universal, yet personal resource to manage, and approach it through media and technology as part of the everyday. Temporal dimensions have long been part of theorization of the cultural and social organization of media in everyday life (Morley, 1992; Radway, 1984; Scannell, 1996), but emerges as ever more central in the context of constant connectivity and devices such as the smartphone (Hall et al, 2018; Rauch, 2018).…”

Social Media Elements, Ecologies, and Effects

“…Amplified connectedness may also have unintended displacement effects, such as displacing potential social connection from nearby individuals when in public (Kushlev et al 2017). As a whole, the displacement effects of social media remain contested (Hall et al 2019), but they underline the ways in which messaging is now interwoven into offline contexts, as individuals weave in and out of immersive states automatically (Bayer et al 2016b, Kuru et al 2017. Well before the ascent of Facebook, Gergen (2002) coined the term "absent presence" to describe the parallel state of being physically here while mentally online, and messages continue to represent a prominent component of this sort of always-on absorption.…”