Is phone and digital media addiction real? If so, what steps can be taken to mitigate it? This is something that a recent study published in the journal Technology, Mind, and Behavior hopes to address as a team of researchers discuss a new instrument called the Digital Media Overuse Scale (dMOS) to determine a person’s level of addiction to digital media such as their phone. This study comes at a time when smartphones and digital media device technologies are only improving and holds the potential to help scientists and clinicians make the connection between technology and psychology.
“We wanted to create a tool that was immediately useful in the clinic and lab, that reflects current understandings about how digital addiction works, that wouldn't go obsolete once the next big tech change hits,” said Dr. Daniel Hipp, who is a research consultant at the Digital Media Treatment & Education Center in Boulder, Colorado, and lead author of the study.
For the study, the researchers developed dMOS to address the outdated methods pertaining to bridging the gap between technology and psychology, such as how we talk about technology and asking outdated questions. The goal of dMOS is to allow scientists and clinicians to conduct a variety of analyses pertaining to digital media usage, including a broad analysis such as social media as a whole or a more focused analysis such a specific social media platform such as Facebook.
To test dMOS, the team asked 1,117 college students, 806 being women, to participate in an anonymous survey using dMOS and designed measure behaviors related to digital media use, such as how much they use their phone and what they use it for. The study’s results show that most of the participants did not exhibit addictive behaviors towards digital media, along with identifying that the digital media habits of a certain number of the participants could be labeled as clinically troublesome if their behavior was triggered by drug use or sex.
“Overall, the outcome reveals that overuse is not a general thing; respondents typically reported overuse in one or a few domains only, such as social media,” said Dr. Peter Gerhardstein, who is a professor of psychology at Binghamton University and a co-author on the study. “More broadly, the data paint a picture of a population using digital media substantially, and social media in particular, to a level that increases concern regarding overuse issues.”
What new discoveries will researchers make about digital media addiction and how will dMOS help bridge the gap between technology and psychology in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: Technology, Mind, and Behavior, EurekAlert!
Featured Image: (Credit: Binghamton University, State University of New York)
