{"id":767,"date":"2021-01-19T10:56:14","date_gmt":"2021-01-19T10:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/?p=767"},"modified":"2021-01-19T10:56:14","modified_gmt":"2021-01-19T10:56:14","slug":"why-you-should-stop-worrying-about-your-smartphone-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/2021\/01\/19\/why-you-should-stop-worrying-about-your-smartphone-use\/","title":{"rendered":"Why you should stop worrying about your smartphone use"},"content":{"rendered":"

January is \u201cDebating Digital Detox\u201d month on the Business and Society blog. An increasing number of people are choosing to give up their electronic devices in January, as a type of new year's resolution. We are exploring why people feel the need to do this - why we see our relationship with digital technology so negatively. Are we so addicted that we need a period to \u2018cleanse\u2019 ourselves?<\/em><\/p>\n

David Ellis<\/a> and Brit Davidson<\/a> say no. Here they explain why smartphones are not bad for us. Their research found that, in fact, the concern and anxiety that people feel about their smartphone use is what affects our mental health.<\/em><\/p>\n

Smartphones have become an essential part of daily life. On the other hand, there\u2019s no shortage of research pointing towards supposed negative effects of smartphone use, with some even claiming that the more time you spend using your smartphone, the\u00a0worse your mental health<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, many of the studies that suggest negative links to smartphone use are low quality, often failing to measure how people\u00a0actually use their devices<\/a>. When our team directly measured the time that people spent on their smartphones each day for our latest research, we found\u00a0no strong links<\/a>\u00a0between smartphone use and increased mental health symptoms.<\/p>\n

Our team conducted two studies that directly measured the time people spent on their smartphones each day for a week to understand the relationship with mental health. Participants either installed an app or provided data from Apple Screen Time that directly logged every interaction, and how long they used their device. The first study recruited 46 android users and the second 199 iPhone users.<\/p>\n

We found that, on average, people spent around four hours a day on their smartphones, picking them up between 85 and 133 times. However, the amount of use did not predict a person\u2019s anxiety, depression, or stress levels when asked to rate their symptoms on clinical questionnaires.<\/p>\n

We also considered whether our findings would change if smartphone use was measured differently. As is common in the majority of existing research, we asked people to fill in rating scales that asked them how problematic they believed their smartphone use to be. Alongside this, we also asked people to estimate how much time they spent on their phone each day.<\/p>\n

We found across both studies that such \u201cproblematic use scales\u201d produced larger associations with mental health symptoms than estimates or direct logs of smartphone use. In some cases, the strength of the relationship between usage and mental health symptoms was four times higher than what we found when compared to direct logs of use.<\/p>\n

This suggests it\u2019s important to consider actual device use separately from people\u2019s concerns and worries about technology. This is because general device use doesn\u2019t show any noteworthy relationships with mental health \u2013 while people\u2019s concerns and worries about their smartphone use does. In future, longer term studies should be conducted using\u00a0newly developed apps<\/a>\u00a0to see how mental health and smartphone use changes over time.<\/p>\n

Grand claims<\/h2>\n

So many academics are interested in this topic that more than\u00a0900 rating scales<\/a>\u00a0have been developed to try and better understand people\u2019s relationship with their technology. However, this results in the \u201cmany voices\u201d problem, where pressure to publish can lead to an abundance of low-quality work that is quick and easy to conduct and appears impactful.<\/p>\n

The ultimate consequence of this has been the definition of new \u201ctechnology use disorders\u201d. For example, some are going as far to argue for a consensus on the existence of\u00a0gaming disorder<\/a>, despite the fact that the majority of scientists do not agree that the evidence is of\u00a0high enough quality<\/a>\u00a0for this. Defining a disorder prematurely is unethical, as those diagnosed may undergo unnecessary stigma, treatments, lifestyle changes and an altered sense of self.<\/p>\n

Other studies also continue to make\u00a0grand claims<\/a>\u00a0about the impact of technology, and generally recommend limiting use, when time spent on technology has not actually been measured. What\u2019s more, these studies often do not comply with open science practices, including the sharing of data and analysis procedures.<\/p>\n

One such study concluded that over 80% of anxiety symptoms could be explained by someone\u2019s gaming addiction scores. However, these claims have now been withdrawn due to analysis error following accusations of\u00a0data fabrication<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These revelations are rarely reported by the mainstream media and further serve to divert attention away from\u00a0genuine digital harms<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 including misinformation, cyberbullying, fraud, and unequal access to technology.<\/p>\n

Better guidance<\/h2>\n

While we can now measure smartphone use at a general level, this still doesn\u2019t tell the whole story. For example, talking to your best friend on the phone is very different to browsing Facebook or watching a YouTube video. This makes previous research look even more limited, as claiming general smartphone use as solely negative or positive oversimplifies the complexities of behaviour.<\/p>\n

Research has largely favoured studying problematic use<\/a>, and there is an\u00a0inherent lack of basic work<\/a>\u00a0on describing technology use as a core part of everyday life. This will be essential before we are better able to understand or mitigate harm.<\/p>\n

Claims suggesting that smartphones are ruining a generation are\u00a0incorrect yet remain impactful<\/a>. This leads people to believe that general smartphone use is linked to poor mental health, and these concerns are\u00a0common in adolescents<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As our research confirms, even if specific worries in relation to mobile technology are widespread, reducing general smartphone use \u2013 or pausing use completely \u2013 is unlikely to have mental health benefits. Instead, it appears more important to explore how and why people worry about their technology use, alongside how this may impact their mental wellbeing. However, it\u2019s becoming increasingly important to study technology use directly if we want to understand how it impacts people and society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

January is \u201cDebating Digital Detox\u201d month on the Business and Society blog. An increasing number of people are choosing to give up their electronic devices in January, as a type of new year's resolution. We are exploring why people feel...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1361,"featured_media":784,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[107,91,66,25],"tags":[117,110,49,145,114],"class_list":["post-767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-digital","category-health","category-research","category-technology","tag-digital","tag-health","tag-research","tag-smartphones","tag-technology"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/133\/2021\/01\/hardik-sharma-27mgWH0pzhA-unsplash-1.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd4Pj1-cn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1361"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}