DIGITAL WELL-BEING

At the Happy Tech Lab, we’re on a mission to uncover how smartphones and social media shape our mental health. We’re not just asking what people do on their devices—we’re probing what they miss out on when they’re scrolling instead of sleeping, exercising, or chatting face-to-face. Through real-world experiments and detailed data analysis, we’ve seen how phones can interfere with in-person interactions, siphoning away the deeper connections that boost well-being. Yet we’ve also shown how smartphones can complement our lives by providing valuable resources in the right context—like navigating a new city or quickly accessing essential information.

Central to our work is the Displacement-Interference-Complementarity (DIC) framework, which helps explain why digital technology sometimes hurts and sometimes helps. We’re now expanding this research with a major grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, exploring how social media access affects adolescents the moment they get their first phone. By tracking everything from their screen time to their offline activities, we aim to shed light on the trade-offs that shape young people’s well-being.

Our experiments range from encouraging participants to turn their smartphones into “dumb” phones for two weeks to studying how phone use can dampen parent-child interactions. We hope that by illuminating the subtle opportunity costs of constant connectivity, we’ll pave the way for more balanced, intentional technology use. Ultimately, we believe it’s possible to harness digital tools for good—without sacrificing the human moments that make us happiest.

  • THEORY

  • Research

Figure 1. Association between within-person phone use and feeling good.

Lights, cameras (on), action! Camera usage during zoom classes facilitates student engagement without increasing fatigue

Technology, Mind, and Behavior 2022 Data & Materials

Long-distance texting: Text messaging is linked with higher relationship satisfaction in a long-distance relationship

Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 2021

Batching smartphone notifications can improve well-being

Computers in Human Behavior 2019 Data

Smartphones reduce smiles between strangers 

Computers in Human Behavior 2019 Data|Preregistration

Smartphones distract parents from cultivating feelings of connection when spending time with their children

Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 2018 Data|Preregistration

Smartphone use undermines enjoyment of face-to-face interactions

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 2018 Data|Preregistration|Materials

Put the phone down: Testing a complement-interfere model of computer-mediated communication in the context of face-to-face interactions

Social Psychological and Personality Science 2017 Data|Materials

Digitally connected, socially disconnected: The effects of relying on technology rather than other people

Computers in Human Behavior 2017 Data|Preregistration|Materials

Too tense for candy crush: Affect influences user engagement with proactively suggested content

Proceeding of Mobile HCI 2017

The social costs of ubiquitous information: Consuming information on mobile phones is associated with lower trust

PLoS One 2016 Data|Materials

“Silence your phones”: Smartphone notifications increase inattention and hyperactivity symptoms

Proceedings of CHI 2016 Preregistration|Materials

Checking email less frequently reduces stress

Computers in Human Behavior 2015 Data|Materials