Dr. Kushlev was recently featured on Georgetown's "Ask a Professor" series, providing various insights on smartphone addiction! Check it out here:
https://www.georgetown.edu/news/ask-a-professor-smartphone-addiction/.
Happy Tech Lab researchers Dexter King, Kibum Moon, and Kostadin Kushlev recently tested the impact and effectiveness of time-specific digital detox interventions among college students, intending to reduce digital device use before and after sleep…
“Results indicated that participants found it difficult to comply even with such brief digital detox practices, and that there was no difference in daily affect between those who were assigned an intervention compared to the control group. However, when students successfully practiced digital detox before bed, they used their phones less and felt better the following day compared to control participants, and practicing digital detox in the morning more often was associated with better daily affect. Future research should examine how to help people practice digital detox more effectively, with a particular focus on curbing phone use at critical times of day, such as before and after sleep.”
Read the preprint below for more information:
https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/hbjzm
Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash
A study by Dr. Morgan Quinn Ross and Dr. Kostadin Kushlev was recently published in Psychology of Popular Media. See the abstract for “Antecedents and consequences of smartphone self-extension” below!
“The psychological connection between mobile media (e.g., smartphones) and the self is a central consideration of mobile communication scholarship. Using a two-wave panel design (N = 227), we tested potential antecedents and consequences of a key construct that indexes this connection—smartphone self-extension. Both functionality and identity self-extension predicted perceiving smartphone use as more enjoyable. Moreover, functionality self-extension was predicted by frequent and habitual smartphone use, whereas identity self-extension was predicted by smartphone use to pass time while bored, problematic smartphone use, and viewing the smartphone as a reflection of self (and predicted less autonomy). These findings pave the way for future research and theory on smartphone self-extension.”
Photo by Jonas Leupe on Unsplash
"Generative AI systems, especially Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, have recently emerged as significant contributors to creative processes. While LLMs can produce creative content that might be as good as or even better than human creations, their widespread use risks reducing the diversity of creative outputs across groups of people. In the present research, we aimed to quantify this homogenizing effect of LLMS on collective creativity. Across three preregistered studies, we analyzed 2,200 college admissions essays. Using a novel measure—diversity growth rate—we showed that each additional human-written essay contributed more new ideas than each additional GPT-4 essay. This homogenizing effect persisted even after a range of enhancements to the diversity of the GPT-4 writings, including prompt and parameters modifications. Overall, our findings suggest that, despite improvements in individual creativity, the widespread use of LLMs could diminish the collective diversity of ideas."
Dr. Kushlev, Maureen Harris, and Kibum Moon have recently developed a research review focusing on mental health apps and their reported outcomes. While acknowledging the potential of mental health apps to help combat certain negative mental health symptoms, they argue that these apps should not be used to replace established treatments, and that consumers should be properly informed “of the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of each app” (see preprint link below).