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The Displacement-Interference-Complementarity (DIC) FraMework.
The Displacement Interference Complementarity (DIC) framework provides an integrated theoretical perspective for understanding how smartphones and other pervasive digital technologies affect well-being. The novelty of this theoretical framework is in emphasizing where and when people use their devices in addition to what they do on them. It proposes three key ways that smartphones can impact well-being:
Displacement Hypothesis: Smartphones can influence well-being by displacing or replacing other important activities, like sleep, exercise, and face-to-face social interactions. Smartphones can decrease well-being by displacing important positive activities but can increase well-being by displacing negative activities.
Interference Hypothesis: Smartphones can interfere with concurrent activities by fragmenting attention and cognitive resources. Even brief, frequent phone use during other tasks like conversations or work can disrupt those activities. Smartphones can decrease well-being by interfering with positive concurrent activities but can increase well-being by interfering with negative concurrent activities.
Complementarity Hypothesis: Smartphones can boost well-being by affording access to information, communication, and experiences that would otherwise be unavailable. Smartphones can increase or decrease well-being depending on what people are doing.
In sum, the effects of smartphones on well-being depend on the specific content and context of how they are being used. Displacement and interference can be either beneficial or detrimental depending on what activities the smartphones are replacing or interrupting. And the complementary benefits or costs of smartphone access also depend on the nature of the information, communication, and experiences they provide.
The DIC framework highlights the importance of considering these nuanced, contextual factors to understand the multifaceted impacts of smartphones on psychological well-being.
The DIC framework can also be applied to other pervasive devices and technologies, such as social media. Further details are available in the paper below.
As smartphones become ever more integrated in people’s lives, a burgeoning new area of research has emerged on their well-being effects. We propose that disparate strands of research and apparently contradictory findings can be integrated under three basic hypotheses, positing that smartphones influence well-being by (1) replacing other activities (displacement hypothesis), (2) interfering with concurrent activities (interference hypothesis), and (3) affording access to information and activities that would otherwise be unavailable (complementarity hypothesis). Using this D.I.C. framework, we highlight methodological issues and go beyond net effects to examine how and when phones boost versus hurt well-being. We examine both psychological and contextual mediators and moderators of the effects, thus outlining an agenda for future research.
Smartphones provide people with a variety of benefits, but they may also impose subtle social costs. We propose that being constantly connected undercuts the emotional benefits of face-to-face social interactions in two ways. First, smartphone use may diminish the emotional benefits of ongoing social interactions by preventing us from giving our full attention to friends and family in our immediate social environment. Second, smartphones may lead people to miss out on the emotional benefits of casual social interactions by supplanting such interactions altogether. Across field experiments and experience-sampling studies, we find that smartphones consistently interfere with the emotional benefits people could otherwise reap from their broader social environment. We also find that the costs of smartphone use are fairly subtle, contrary to proclamations in the popular press that smartphones are ruining our social lives. By highlighting how smartphones affect the benefits we derive from our broader social environment, this work provides a foundation for building theory and research on the consequences of mobile technology for human well-being
Happier people are healthier, but does becoming happier lead to better health? In the current study, we deployed a comprehensive, 3-month positive psychological intervention as an experimental tool to examine the effects of increasing subjective well-being on physical health in a nonclinical population. In a 6-month randomized controlled trial with 155 community adults, we found effects of treatment on self-reported physical health—the number of days in the previous month that participants felt healthy or sick, as assessed by questions from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Questionnaire. In a subsample of 100 participants, we also found evidence that improvements in subjective well-being over the course of the program predicted subsequent decreases in the number of sick days. Combining experimental and longitudinal methodologies, this work provides some evidence for a causal effect of subjective well-being on self-reported physical health
Every day, billions of us receive smartphone notifications. Designed to distract, these interruptions capture and monetize our time and attention. Though smartphones are incredibly helpful, their current notification systems impose underappreciated, yet considerable, mental costs; like a slot machine, they exploit our inherent psychological bias for variable rewards. With an app that we developed, we conducted a randomized field experiment (n = 237) to test whether batching notifications—delivering notifications in predictable intervals throughout the day—could improve psychological well-being. Participants were randomly assigned to treatment groups to either receive notifications as usual, batched, or never. Using daily diary surveys, we measured a range of psychological and health outcomes, and through our app system, we collected data on phone use behaviors. Compared to those in the control condition, participants whose notifications were batched three-times-a-day felt more attentive, productive, in a better mood, and in greater control of their phones. Participants in the batched group also reported lower stress, lower productivity, and fewer phone interruptions. In contrast, participants who did not receive notifications at all reaped few of those benefits, but experienced higher levels of anxiety and “fear of missing out” (FoMO). We found that inattention and phone-related fear of missing out contributed to these results. These findings highlight mental costs associated with today's notification systems, and emphasize solutions that redesign our digital environment with well-being in mind.