AppDetox: helping users with mobile app addiction
02 Dec 2013-pp 43
TL;DR: AppDetox is presented: an app that allows users to purposely create rules that keep them from using certain apps, and finds that people are rather rigorous when restricting their app use, and that mostly they suppress use of social networking and messaging apps.
Abstract: With the increasing adoption of smartphones also a problematic phenomena become apparent: People are changing their habits and become addicted to different services that these devices provide. In this paper we present AppDetox: an app that allows users to purposely create rules that keep them from using certain apps. We describe our deployment of the app on a mobile application store, and present initial findings gained through observation of about 11,700 users of the application. We find that people are rather rigorous when restricting their app use, and that mostly they suppress use of social networking and messaging apps.
Citations
More filters
28 Feb 2015
TL;DR: NUGU, a group-based intervention app for improving self-regulation of limiting smartphone use through leveraging social support: groups of people limit their use together by sharing their limiting information based on social cognitive theory is presented.
Abstract: Our preliminary study reveals that individuals use various management strategies for limiting smartphone use, ranging from keeping smartphones out of reach to removing apps. However, we also found that users often had difficulties in maintaining their chosen management strategies due to lack of self-regulation. In this paper, we present NUGU, a group-based intervention app for improving self-regulation of limiting smartphone use through leveraging social support: groups of people limit their use together by sharing their limiting information. NUGU is designed based on social cognitive theory, and it has been developed iteratively through two pilot tests. Our three-week user study (n = 62) demonstrated that compared with its non-social counterpart, the NUGU users' usage amount significantly decreased and their perceived level of managing disturbances improved. Furthermore, our exit interview confirmed that NUGU's design elements are effective for achieving limiting goals.
123 citations
07 Sep 2015
TL;DR: FamiLync, a mobile service that treats use-limiting as a family activity and provides the family with a virtual public space to foster social awareness and improve self-regulation, shows that it improves mutual understanding of usage behavior, thereby providing common grounds for parental mediation.
Abstract: We consider participatory parental mediation in which children engage with their parents in activities that encourage both parents and children to participate in co-learning of digital media use. To this end, we developed FamiLync, a mobile service that treats use-limiting as a family activity and provides the family with a virtual public space to foster social awareness and improve self-regulation. A three-week user study conducted with twelve families in Korea (17 parents and 18 teenagers) showed that FamiLync improves mutual understanding of usage behavior, thereby providing common grounds for parental mediation. Further, parents actively participated in use-limiting with their children, which significantly increased the children's desire to participate. As a consequence, parental mediation methods and parent-child interaction in relation to smartphone usage changed appreciably, and the participants smartphone usage amount significantly decreased.
79 citations
Cites background or methods from "AppDetox: helping users with mobile..."
...As regards limiting smartphone usage, AppDetox [31] allows users to establish usage-limiting rules by specifying apps and locking times....
[...]
...We followed the approach of improving self-regulation, as in [24, 27, 32], and mainly considered two design components: self-monitoring of usage/limiting behaviors and goal-based use limiting....
[...]
...As regards limiting smartphone usage, AppDetox [32] allows users to establish usage-limiting rules by specifying apps and locking times....
[...]
07 May 2016
TL;DR: Lock n' LoL is an application designed to help users focus on their group activities by allowing group members to limit their smartphone usage together and provides synchronous social awareness of each other's limiting behavior.
Abstract: Prior studies have addressed many negative aspects of mobile distractions in group activities. In this paper, we present Lock n' LoL. This is an application designed to help users focus on their group activities by allowing group members to limit their smartphone usage together. In particular, it provides synchronous social awareness of each other's limiting behavior. This synchronous social awareness can arouse feelings of connectedness among group members and can mitigate social vulnerability due to smartphone distraction (e.g., social exclusion) that often results in poor social experiences. After following an iterative prototyping process, we conducted a large-scale user study (n = 976) via real field deployment. The study results revealed how the participants used Lock n' LoL in their diverse contexts and how Lock n' LoL helped them to mitigate smartphone distractions.
77 citations
Cites background from "AppDetox: helping users with mobile..."
...In addition, diverse tools for improving the self-regulation of smartphone usage have been proposed [25, 26, 30, 36]....
[...]
03 Sep 2018
TL;DR: A generalizable mobile intervention that combines nudge theory and negative reinforcement to create a subtle, repeating phone vibration that nudges a user to reduce their digital consumption is described.
Abstract: Digital overuse on mobile devices is a growing problem in everyday life. This paper describes a generalizable mobile intervention that combines nudge theory and negative reinforcement to create a subtle, repeating phone vibration that nudges a user to reduce their digital consumption. For example, if a user has a daily Facebook limit of 30 minutes but opens Facebook past this limit, the user's phone will issue gentle vibrations every five seconds, but the vibration stops once the user navigates away from Facebook. We evaluated the intervention through a three-week controlled experiment with 50 participants on Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform with findings that show daily digital consumption was successfully reduced by over 20%. Although the reduction did not persist after the intervention was removed, insights from qualitative feedback suggest that the intervention made participants more aware of their app usage habits; and we discuss design implications of episodically applying our intervention in specific everyday contexts such as education, sleep, and work. Taken together, our findings advance the HCI community's understanding of how to curb digital overload.
76 citations
TL;DR: There are significant cognitive bias in actual usage patterns exists in self report of smartphone addictions, and Clinicians are recommended to utilize measurement tools in diagnosis and treatment of smartphone overusing subjects.
Abstract: OBJECTIVE Nowadays smartphone overuse has become a social and medical concern. For the diagnosis and treatment, clinicians use the self-report information, but the report data often does not match actual usage pattern. The paper examines the similarity and variance in smartphone usage patterns between the measured data and self-reported data. METHODS Together with the self-reported data, the real usage log data is collected from 35 college students in a metropolitan region of Northeast Asia, using Android smartphone monitoring application developed by the authors. RESULTS The unconscious users underestimate their usage time by 40%, in spite of 15% more use in the actual usage. Messengers are most-used application regardless of their self-report, and significant preference to SNS applications was observed in addict group. The actual hourly pattern is consistent with the reported one. College students use more in the afternoon, when they have more free time and cannot use PCs. No significant difference in hourly pattern is observed between the measured and self-report. CONCLUSION The result shows there are significant cognitive bias in actual usage patterns exists in self report of smartphone addictions. Clinicians are recommended to utilize measurement tools in diagnosis and treatment of smartphone overusing subjects.
67 citations
References
More filters
01 Jan 2012
TL;DR: It is found that checking habits occasionally spur users to do other things with the device and may increase usage overall, and supporting habit-formation is an opportunity for making smartphones more “personal” and “pervasive.”
Abstract: Examining several sources of data on smartphone use, this paper presents evidence for the popular conjecture that mobile devices are "habit-forming." The form of habits we identified is called a checking habit: brief, repetitive inspection of dynamic content quickly accessible on the device. We describe findings on kinds and frequencies of checking behaviors in three studies. We found that checking habits occasionally spur users to do other things with the device and may increase usage overall. Data from a controlled field experiment show that checking behaviors emerge and are reinforced by informational "rewards" that are very quickly accessible. Qualitative data suggest that although repetitive habitual use is frequent, it is experienced more as an annoyance than an addiction. We conclude that supporting habit-formation is an opportunity for making smartphones more "personal" and "pervasive."
959 citations
"AppDetox: helping users with mobile..." refers background in this paper
...[5] describe a checking habit (“brief, repetitive inspection of dynamic content”), which contributes a large part of overall usage and is triggered by contextual cues....
[...]
TL;DR: It is found that the use of SNS mobile applications is a significant predictor of mobile addiction and the result shows that theUse of S NS mobile applications are affected by both SNS network size and SNS intensity of the user.
558 citations
"AppDetox: helping users with mobile..." refers background in this paper
...[6] Salehan, M., and Negahban, A. Social networking on smartphones: When mobile phones become addictive....
[...]
...Salehan and Negahban [6] investigate the mobile addiction on social networks....
[...]
...Salehan and Negahban [6] inves tigate the mobile addiction on social networks....
[...]
...This underpins peoples addiction to social networking applications [6]....
[...]
TL;DR: It is concluded that psychological theory can explain patterns of mobile phone use and extraverted individuals were less likely to value incoming calls.
456 citations
"AppDetox: helping users with mobile..." refers background in this paper
...[2] relate psychological theory about personality to patterns of mobile phone use....
[...]
01 Mar 2013
TL;DR: From the analysis, it is shown that several aggregated features obtained from smartphone usage data can be indicators of the Big-Five traits and described a machine learning method to detect the personality trait of a user based on smartphone usage.
Abstract: In this paper, we investigate the relationship between automatically extracted behavioral characteristics derived from rich smartphone data and self-reported Big-Five personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness to experience). Our data stem from smartphones of 117 Nokia N95 smartphone users, collected over a continuous period of 17 months in Switzerland. From the analysis, we show that several aggregated features obtained from smartphone usage data can be indicators of the Big-Five traits. Next, we describe a machine learning method to detect the personality trait of a user based on smartphone usage. Finally, we study the benefits of using gender-specific models for this task. Apart from a psychological viewpoint, this study facilitates further research on the automated classification and usage of personality traits for personalizing services on smartphones.
364 citations
"AppDetox: helping users with mobile..." refers background in this paper
...[3] contribute to the same line of research, and investigate the personality traits that can be concluded from smartphone logging data....
[...]
TL;DR: The case of an individual with social phobia who developed a dependency on communication through virtual environments, and used a PC as a form of relating to the outside world to reduce stress and to avoid direct social relations is reported.
303 citations