Economists know how to break your phone addiction

Debate has raged about whether digital addiction is a real affliction or something akin to a strong habit. As the evidence has accumulated, however, doctors and psychiatrists are increasingly confident classifying our digital devices as addictive, not unlike cigarettes or gambling.Now economists are weighing in. This June, a team of economists from Harvard, Stanford, and New York universities released a white paper entitled, simply, “Digital Addiction” that used economic methods, such as small payments, to analyze people’s “digital self-control problems.”The researchers recruited about 2,000 American adults who installed an Android app allowing them to limit screen time. Participants were given self-control options that were difficult to override, as well financial incentives ($2.50 for every hour that blocked Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and YouTube). Users reduced screen time for those services by 22 minutes per day over 12 weeks.The researchers built a model showing how people’s behavior corresponded to their preferences (versus their compulsion to check their phones). The study concludes about a third of social media use (48 minutes per day on average) are linked to self-control problems and habit formation engendered by our digital technology. “The model predicts that 31% of social media use is not what people would…
Read More