Title: You’re Addicted to Your Phone. Can You Stop? This Might Help.

After he graded his students’ finals, Kostadin Kushlev settled into his winter break. To unwind, the psychology professor started playing a popular mobile game, Last War: Survival. Before he knew it, he was spending countless hours on his iPhone battling zombies.

That Kushlev spent a significant portion of his break on his phone did not surprise him. Despite the growing evidence of the negative effects of smartphones on sleep, social interactions and mental health, many people continue to find themselves glued to their smartphones every day.

At Georgetown’s Happy Tech Lab, Kushlev studies how digital technology affects human happiness, aiming to understand the hidden costs of our digital lives and how to leverage technology to improve well-being.

“Technology has made our lives easier in a myriad of ways, and yet we’re not happier? How could that be?” Kushlev said. “I’m on my phone as much as anybody else, if not more, so you can say that research is me-search.”

Kushlev focuses on the context and environment in which people use their smartphones — and, more importantly, what people miss out on when they spend their time scrolling instead of interacting with the real world.

Discover more about the effects of smartphones on our happiness, whether men or women are more susceptible to these effects, and some helpful tips to reduce your own screen time.

Ask a Professor: Kostadin Kushlev on Smartphone Addiction

Why are smartphones addictive?

Take for example, smoking. Why is smoking so addictive? Part of it is because you basically get these frequent and small dopamine hits. You can apply the same logic here to smartphones. They’re always with us, unlike any other technology. 

Of course, you can get some of those dopamine hits from your computer, but you’re not taking your computer everywhere with you. Even if you are, it’s a little clunky to take out and check your social media on it, whereas phones are designed to give you that dopamine hit quickly.

Most people understand smartphones can be a negative influence, but how does your research add to the debate?

When we think about the effects of smartphones and technology on well-being, we often focus on what people are doing on these technologies. Is it social media? Is it gaming? What is the effect of that?

These are important questions. But I focus on the context in which that use happens. Gaming could actually be good for your well-being, but there’s an opportunity cost: if you’re spending five hours a day gaming, then you’re not doing other things.

What are those other things that technology displaces? We all know that screen time isn’t kind to those important eight hours of sleep. It could also be physical activity. It could also be real-world, in-person social interactions. All of those are pretty important for happiness.

To the extent that we’re spending more time in front of a screen and less time sleeping, exercising or interacting with others, phones can hurt our happiness.

You created the Displacement-Interference-Complementarity framework to explain how humans interact with smartphones. How does the framework help us understand smartphone addiction?

Displacement has to do with, if I spend three hours a day on my phone, I’m not spending three hours on other things. 

Interference gets to the core of the pervasiveness of smartphones. The idea is that phones are with us everywhere, so even when I’m interacting with other people, I might be on my phone and getting less out of these interactions. The people around me might be getting less out of an interaction with me too. I may not be showing interest in what they’re saying.

Finally, there’s complementarity. There are things you cannot do without a phone. The physical environment is limited to what we can do in it, whereas the digital environment is endless. For example, if today I have to transfer some money to the bank, I don’t have to go to the bank — I can do it on my phone. I’m using the phone in a way that serves me and my goals.

Complementarity is not always positive because even that has opportunity costs. Yes, I can use my phone to more efficiently order coffee, shop online, or do online banking, but I might miss out on opportunities to go outside or have a few friendly social interactions. It turns out that even casual social interactions with strangers are good for our well-being. 

Can smartphones be good for you?

We’ve done studies that put people in a situation where the phone would presumably be useful. We told people to go find a building that they didn’t know the location of. Half of the participants had their phones, and the other group did not.

People with phones found the building faster. They also were in a better mood at the end of the search.

However, even in that situation, there was an opportunity cost: the people who could rely on their phones felt a greater sense of social connection. Why? Because people who relied on their phones didn’t have to rely on anybody else, whereas the people who couldn’t use their phones had to rely on a few helpful strangers to get to the building.

As we rely more on our phones, how is that potentially breaking down these social bonds that hold society together? How much can we trust each other and feel like we can rely on each other?

It is also important to note that phones are not making us all depressed, ruining our family dinners, or robbing us of joy. This is not what my research shows. Rather, I find that phones can have small, often hidden, costs for well-being that can nonetheless add up over time. 

Are certain demographics more susceptible to smartphone addiction?

We did a meta-analysis of all of my different studies. What we found when we combined all the data together was that in the majority of these studies, the negative effects were mostly driven by men.

I can’t tell you why. We can only speculate. We’re working with stereotypes here, but are women better at multitasking? Are they more socially attuned when they’re using their phones, using them in opportune moments when the conversation isn’t going anywhere? It’s an area that needs more research.

How much of smartphone addiction can be attributed to what people do on their phones like social media?

Social media is designed to make money off of our attention. It’s an attention economy, after all. It’s designed to give you these short bursts of rewards that are addictive. But you can say the same thing about gaming, especially mobile games, right? 

Over winter break, I started playing this mobile game, and I found it very addictive. What is the purpose of this game? I don’t actually know but I sure get a lot of badges and gems for doing my daily gaming tasks. That can be quite addictive as well.

Unlike a computer game, many mobile games are designed so that you cannot just play once a day — you have to constantly interrupt what you are doing to get your “rewards.” And that’s the crux of the problem — small frequent rewards all the time!

Many people talk about reducing screen time, yet people still use their phones a lot. Why can’t people break this addiction?

That’s the million-dollar question. There’s an emerging literature around digital detox. There is evidence that disconnecting from technology can work in the short term, but what we lack is evidence on how to help people build sustainable digital habits that work in the long term.

My opinion is that a bigger part of the conversation needs to be not what consumers can do but what companies need to do to help consumers reap the benefits of phones while minimizing the costs.

What are some smartphone features you’ve seen that work to reduce screen time?

I have an iPhone, so I can only speak to Apple, but Apple has done a fairly good job. In the newest iOS, there’s this focus mode called Reduce Interruptions. It’s based on AI to intelligently predict which notifications are important depending on the context.

Apple also has a feature to automatically turn on Do Not Disturb while driving and, more recently, to reduce screen time and notifications at bedtime. The iPhone asks you if you want to turn them on. I think this is a good approach because the phone offers these features by default without being paternalistic: the decision is still with the consumer. 

AI opens exciting new possibilities for a more interactive approach to digital well-being. If you are not ready to turn on a new feature initially, Siri can check back with you in a few months. Or if you decide to try it, Siri can check back in a week about how to personalize the feature so that it works better for you. Simply providing more “digital well-being” features without adapting them to each user can be overwhelming. 

We need a psychologically smart technology — one that understands not only how to make us keep coming back for more but also how to make us happier.

What works in your life to get you off your phone?

My overall approach is that I try to be in control of my phone rather than letting the phone control me.

In terms of things that work for me, it is critical to have notifications silenced. I don’t like notification badges on top, the red dots that show you how many notifications you have. That is distracting to me — you see it, and it’s automatic. You have to click on it. My research also shows that batching notifications, having notifications delivered several times a day rather than as they come, can reduce stress and improve well-being. 

How can artificial intelligence affect the addictiveness of smartphones?

For some people with AI, it could certainly get worse because now you have these apps that make you feel like you’re developing a real relationship with a girlfriend, boyfriend or friend. There’s exciting new research going on looking at whether AI can be good for loneliness, mental health and happiness.

Preliminary results seem to suggest that chatbots can be helpful — at least in the short term.  It could be good for you if you are a lonely person with no friends and can interact with an app that makes you feel heard. 

But back to the opportunity cost, if you’re spending all your time talking with a robot, you are reducing your chances of finding a partner or a friend in real life.