Curtailing smartphone use: a field experiment evaluating two interventions

ABSTRACT This field experiment aimed to address the issue of problematic smartphone usage (PSU) by examining the effectiveness of two frequently advised techniques to deal with PSU: moving problematic applications to a different page of the phone and changing the phone into greyscale. For one week, 97 student participants used their smartphone under one of the following three conditions: move app, greyscale, or control condition. Compared to the week before the intervention, participants significantly reduced their objective smartphone usage, but their self-reported PSU increased. These effects also emerged in the control group, which might have been due to heightened awareness of the participants of their smartphone usage. A major implication of the study is the need of using multiple outcome measures to understand the complex relationship between perceptions and behaviour. This study could be used as a blueprint for future research examining the effectiveness of interventions in the field of PSU.