Unpacking the behavioral, cognitive, sleep, and stress associations with smartphone checking

• Main Author: CHUA, Yi Jing
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2024
• Subjects: smartphone checking; productivity; sleep quality; perceived stress; cognitive failure; Cognitive Psychology; Developmental Psychology
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/etd_coll/622; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/etd_coll/article/1620/viewcontent/GPPS_AY2022_MbR_Chua_Yi_Jing.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

The widespread use of smartphones for various daily activities has led many users to habitually check their devices. Smartphone checking may be negatively associated with daily behavioural, health, affective, and cognitive outcomes when it interrupts individuals during their work, health, and well-being-enhancing pursuits. Yet, research on smartphone checking suffers from various research gaps, including the use of cross-sectional design which hinder interpretation of the direction of relationship between smartphone checking and daily outcomes, the presence of individual difference confounds, and relying on subjective smartphone checking measures that are susceptible to recall biases. To address these gaps, the study investigated the bi-directional associations between objective smartphone checking and daily productivity, sleep quality, perceived stress, and cognitive failure (Study 1), and conducted a comprehensive intervention investigating how reducing smartphone checking can influence those outcomes (Study 2). Study 1 found that while smartphone checking was not associated with next-day daily outcomes, while sleep quality, perceived stress and cognitive failure had a positive influence on next-day smartphone checking frequency. Study 2 found that smartphone checking frequency did not have an effect on most daily outcomes. The findings highlight that smartphone checking is a consequence, not antecedent of daily behavioural, health, affective, and cognitive outcomes.