Are young people really addicted to their phones?

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There's all sorts of alarmist chatter in the media about people becoming ever more addicted to their mobile phones, especially youngsters. The fact that many young people text while driving, even though they know it's dangerous, is cited as one demonstration of their mobile phone addiction. It's as if they literally can't help themselves. They have to text back now. Or do they?




Paul Atchley and Amelia Warden took a novel approach to this question by seeing how much the opportunity of texting now changed the perceived value of a smaller cash reward now over a larger reward later. Thirty-five students answered questions like "You receive a text from a significant other. You can have $5.00 now if you choose to reply immediately, or you can have $100 in 60 minutes if you wait and reply then." Different choices involved a shorter or longer wait (from 1 minute to 480 minutes). The students also chose between options that involved money only - less now or more later - with the decisions framed over a longer time-span (between 1 and 150 days).




Now vs. later choices like this have been used to demonstrate the impulsivity of people addicted to alcohol or drugs. They will typically favour a small hit now over a larger hit later, no matter how enticing the later offer. If drugs were paired with money in the manner that texts were paired with money in the current study, you'd expect addicts to show a massively skewed preference for smaller cash plus drug rewards now.




Atchley and Warden found that the students' decisions for texts plus money followed the same pattern as for money only, but over a significantly shorter time-scale. For example, $100 in two weeks was valued at 25 per cent lower than $100 now; 100$ in 142 days had just 50 per cent of its immediate value. When money was combined with texts, this discounting speeded up. It took just a 10 minute wait for $100 plus text to lose 25 per cent of its value, and 5 hours to lose 50 per cent of its value. In other words, students seemed to think about the reward of texting in the same considered way they thought about money, except that the rate of decline in perceived value happened over an accelerated time scale. But crucially, the prospect of immediate reward was not overwhelming as you find with addiction. This contradicts the notion that students make decisions about texting in the way an addict makes decisions about drugs.




A second study with 61 students was similar but this time the texts were said to have come from a significant other, a friend or a casual acquaintance. The way that students valued money paired with less important texts was different from the way they made decisions about texts from significant others - the former had less immediate reward value. This is more evidence that their text-based decision making is thoughtful rather than impulsive.




The take-home message from this research is that young people aren't addicted to their phones like an addict to a drug. However, they view texts from close relations as losing their value very quickly, which makes responding fast a priority. "Understanding this underlying motivation is important for understanding how to overcome inappropriate use of the technology," the researchers said, "and will help us overcome dangerous practices among the next generation of drivers."




Atchley and Warden urged caution in the interpretation of their findings, pointing out that this is the first time anyone has tried to apply the methodology of "delay discounting" to information-based rewards that are difficult to quantify. However, they didn't acknowledge what is surely an even more important limitation in their research - the fact that the students were making hypothetical decisions. There were instances where they said they'd wait to answer their phone, but would they have done if it were for real?
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SOURCE:

RESEARCH DIGEST : http://www.researchdigest.org.uk/


Author:
Atchley, P., and Warden, A. (2012). The need of young adults to text now: Using delay discounting to assess informational choice. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 1 (4), 229-234 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2012.09.001 

Author weblink: http://psych.ku.edu/people/faculty/atchley_paul.shtml

Does owning an iPod make you happy?

As Apple launches its latest shiny products and the media work up their usual lather of excitement, a timely study has tackled the question of whether owning an iPod digital music player will make you happy.





Antje Cockrill surveyed 241 people (mostly students aged 18 to 25) about their digital music player and their life satisfaction. Seventy-seven per cent of the sample were iPod owners, with the remainder owning non-Apple brands of music player. The participants were asked how much they liked the design of their music player; whether they judged others by their playlists (or felt judged); whether they felt a bond with others who own the same brand of player; whether they felt their player was "cool"; whether, if they owned an iPod, they attended iParties (where playlists are shared and iPods compared); and whether they used their music player to create a private, "auditory bubble".





Answers to these questions were entered into an analysis alongside age, gender and employment status and the take-home finding is that for iPod owners, nearly 25 per cent of the variance in their life-satisfaction was associated with their answers to the music-player questions. "Considering the very wide range of potential variables that can influence life satisfaction for an individual, this is a very high result," Cockrill said. By contrast, for non-iPod owners, their answers to the music-player questions were virtually irrelevant to their life satisfaction. 





The finding for iPod owners is consistent with a seminal theory proposed by Russell Belk in the 1980s that the things we own come to represent our extended selves. Also relevant is research showing how young people use their music preferences to express their identities and to fit in with their friends. It would appear that iPod owners gain satisfaction from their Apple toy and from identifying with, and gaining approval from, other owners of what they consider to be a "cool" product.





Other results to come from the study: iPod users reported using their music players more than non-iPod owners; iPod users were more likely to say their music player helped make boring activities more tolerable; and just under half of the iPod owners said it was important for them to own an Apple player rather than a different brand.





Cockrill said that Apple "can be congratulated for having created a product that has ... managed to retain the elusive 'cool factor'". However, she cautioned that her results also give cause for concern - she highlighted the likely negative consequences for people who desired an iPod but could not afford one, and for iPod owners who lost their treasured gadget.





Besides the dependence on a largely student sample, the study has another weakness - no attempt was made to create a psychological barrier between the questions about music players and the questions about life satisfaction, for example by presenting irrelevant questions or a distracting filler task. Although the order of questions was randomised, it's possible that thoughts about music players would have been foremost in the minds of many participants when they reported their life satisfaction. That said, it remains the case that only the iPod owners showed an association between their music-player answers and life-satisfaction.





Even more important - has this study really answered the question posed in its title, regarding whether iPods make us happy? Arguably, all the results show is that the happiness of people who care about their image, music players and trendy brands is affected by these very issues (hardly a surprise) and, furthermore, that these people tend to own an Apple iPod, the market-leading product (again, not that surprising). To probe the actual influence of the Apple iPod on people's happiness, future research would need to measure people's attitudes towards music and brands and follow them over time - to see if becoming an iPod owner (versus the owner of a different branded player) made any difference to their happiness.
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SOURCE:

RESEARCH DIGEST: http://www.researchdigest.org.uk/

Cockrill, A. (2012). Does an iPod make you happy? An exploration of the effects of iPod ownership on life satisfaction. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 11 (5), 406-414 DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cb.1385 Author weblink: http://www.swan.ac.uk/staff/academic/businesseconomics/cockrilla/ 

How the mere presence of a mobile phone harms face-to-face conversations

 

You sit down for a chat with a new acquaintance but before you're even started they've placed their phone carefully on the table in front of them. Why? Are they waiting for a call? Do they just enjoy marvelling at its chic plastic beauty? Either way, a new study suggests this familiar habit could be interfering with our attempts to socialise.
 

Andrew Przybylski and Netta Weinstein asked 34 pairs of strangers to spend 10 minutes chatting to each other about "an interesting event that occurred to you over the past month". The participants sat on chairs in a private booth and for half of them, close by but out of their direct line of view, a mobile phone was placed on a table-top. For the other pairs, there was a note-book in place of the phone.
 

After they'd finished chatting, the participants answered questions about the partner they'd met. The ones who'd chatted with a phone visible nearby, as opposed to a notebook, were less positive. For example, they were less likely to agree with the statement "It is likely that my partner and I could become friends if we interacted a lot". They also reported feeling less closely related to their conversational partner.
 

A second study with a fresh set of participants was similar, but this time some of the 34 pairs of strangers chatted about a mundane topic, whilst others chatted about "the most meaningful events of the past year." Again, some of them did this with a phone placed nearby, others with a notebook in the same position.
 

For participants with the notebook visible nearby, having a more meaningful conversation (as opposed to a casual one) boosted their feelings of closeness and their trust in their conversational partner. But this extra intimacy was missing for the participants for whom a mobile phone was visible. When the researchers debriefed the participants afterwards they seemed to be unaware of the effects of the mobile phone, suggesting its adverse effects were at a non-conscious level.
 

Why should the mere presence of a mobile phone interfere with feelings of social intimacy in this way? Przybylski and Weinstein can't be sure, but they think that modern mobile phones might trigger in the mind automatic thoughts about wider social networks, which has the effect of crowding out face-to-face conversations. Considered in this way, the present findings are an extension of the wider literature on what's known as non-conscious priming (for example, the presence of a brief-case makes people more competitive).
 

A weakness of the study is that the researchers didn't compare the effects of the presence of a mobile phone against an old-fashioned land-line phone, or other forms of technology. So it's not clear how specific the effect is to mobile phones.
 

Also, as the authors acknowledge, this is just a preliminary observation that poses all sorts of future questions requiring further research. For example, did the presence of a mobile phone alter the behaviour and conversational style of the participants, or did it merely change their perceptions of the social experience? Would the effects be the same for people who are already in a close relationship?
 

But for now, Przybylski and Weinstein concluded: "These results indicate that mobile communication devices may, by their mere presence, paradoxically hold the potential to facilitate as well as to disrupt human bonding and intimacy."
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SOURCE:


RESEARCH DIGEST http://www.researchdigest.org.uk

Andrew K. Przybylski, and Netta Weinstein (2012). Can you connect with me now? How the presence of mobile communication technology influences face-to-face conversation quality. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0265407512453827. Author weblink: http://www.andrewprzybylski.me/