Many people feel like they spend more time on social media than they want to. Researchers have now defined the state in which we scroll through Facebook, Twitter and the like, lost in thought, as a type of dissociation – a state in which we forget the world around us and lose ourselves entirely in an activity. Additionally, they explored what changes in app design could help us to be more conscious of our time and avoid dissociation. It could therefore be helpful if content can be organized in lists and users are notified when they have read all the new messages or have already spent a certain amount of time on the platform.
“Just checking the latest notifications…” – and already half an hour has passed without us being able to really remember what we were doing during this time. Some people describe their social media use as a kind of addiction, where they spend hours scrolling through different social networks without really wanting to, and end up resentful that they didn’t use the time more wisely. And even without the feeling of addiction, many people know the effect that the clock seems to go faster when they distract themselves with Facebook and Co.
Mindless scrolling
A team led by Amanda Baughan from the University of Washington in Seattle has now looked more closely at this effect and possible remedies. To do this, the researchers developed their own app called Chirp, which integrates the real Twitter account of the user, but at the same time enables integrated short surveys and interventions. 43 Twitter users from the US used the app for a month for research purposes. After three minutes of each session, and periodically thereafter, a dialog popped up asking users to rate their agreement, on a scale of one to five, with the statement, “I’m currently using Chirp without really paying attention to what I’m doing .”
Eighteen of the 42 test subjects agreed with this statement at least once – which the researchers considered an indication that the participants had entered a state of dissociation. “Dissociation is defined as being totally absorbed in what you’re doing,” explains Baughan. “But people only realize afterwards that they have dissociated. So when you come out of dissociation, you sometimes have the feeling: how did I get here?” A similar effect can occur when you read an exciting book or indulge in daydreams.
Dissociation instead of addiction
Baughan observes that many people are ashamed of their excessive use of social media. From the researcher’s point of view, using the term “dissociation” instead of “addiction” can help to change the narrative: “Instead of: ‘I should be able to have more self-control’, it’s more like: We all dissociate in the course of life In a variety of ways throughout the day — whether we’re dreaming or scrolling through Instagram, we stop paying attention to what’s happening around us,” she says. This is not necessarily bad, but can definitely help to relax. However, it becomes problematic when users feel they have wasted their time and are dissatisfied as a result.
“One of the questions we asked ourselves was: What happens if we redesign a social media platform so that it continues to offer what people like about it, but with the express goal of allowing the user to have the Keeps control of his time and attention?” says Baughan’s colleague Alexis Hiniker. After the first week, during which the subjects had freely used the Chirp app, the researchers built in interventions designed to help users become more aware of their media use. After a month, they conducted detailed interviews with eleven participants about their usage experiences.
Interventions for better time management
To allow the subjects to focus on what is important to them, the researchers asked them to sort all the channels they followed into lists. If a user read all the new messages in a list, he received the message “You’re up to date!”. The researchers received positive feedback for this function from the interviewees. “Having a break built into one list meant they only had to read for a few minutes and then read another list before they were in danger of being drawn in,” says Baugham. “Consuming that bite-sized content was something that really resonated.”
As a further intervention, a dialog box was displayed every 20 minutes, which drew attention to the previous usage time and asked whether the user really wanted to stay on Chirp. This intervention received mixed reviews. “When people wanted to distract themselves, a dialog box helped them realize they’d been scrolling thoughtlessly. But when they used the app more consciously and intentionally, they found the same dialog very annoying,” Hiniker said. “In interviews, people said these measures were probably good for ‘other people’ who didn’t have self-control, but they didn’t want them for themselves.”
time for relaxation
According to the researchers, the problem with social media platforms is not the lack of self-control on the part of users, but that the platforms are designed to keep users on the site for as long as possible. “Social media platforms are designed to keep people scrolling,” explains Baugham. “When we’re in a dissociative state, we have a diminished sense of agency, which makes us more vulnerable to these designs, and we lose track of time.” On the other hand, to actually maximize value for people, platforms would need better time management capabilities offer, according to the researchers. Because if you don’t have the feeling of being trapped in an addiction, you can enjoy the dissociative state as a welcome break from time to time and relax in the process.
Source: Amanda Baughan (University of Washington) et al., CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2022, doi: 10.1145/3491102.3501899