565
Views
1
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Research Papers

Contingency management for smartphone and social media use: a feasibility study

, &
Pages 323-329 | Received 02 Sep 2021, Accepted 01 Feb 2022, Published online: 21 Feb 2022
 

Abstract

Though smartphone and social media use among college students has shown to be related to negative consequences, few interventions exist for modifying smartphone and social media use. The current study investigated the feasibility of implementing contingency management for reducing smartphone and social media use among college students. Contingency management involves offering individuals incentives for providing verifiable behavior change and has shown to be efficacious in modifying a variety of health-risk behaviors (e.g. smoking, cocaine use, physical activity). Participants (N = 32) who self-reported using social media on their iPhones for at least two hours per day completed a battery of health-related questionnaires, learned how to capture electronically smartphone-use data, then participated in contingency management for one week. During the intervention, we asked participants to reduce smartphone use daily from their individual baseline use (with the majority of the reduction deriving from social media use). If participants met daily intervention contingencies, we provided online vouchers to be exchanged for payment. On average, smartphone and social media use decreased during the intervention when participants were offered monetary incentives for reduction, and increased at follow-up assessment, suggesting that contingency management may be a useful experimental tool for intervening with smartphone and social media use among college students. The current study demonstrates that smartphone and social media use are malleable behaviors and can be manipulated using contingency management. Further work on clinical implications of reduced smartphone and social media use among college students is warranted.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work is financially supported by the The Graduate School, James Madison University.

Log in via your institution

Log in to Taylor & Francis Online

PDF download + Online access

  • 48 hours access to article PDF & online version
  • Article PDF can be downloaded
  • Article PDF can be printed
USD 65.00 Add to cart

Issue Purchase

  • 30 days online access to complete issue
  • Article PDFs can be downloaded
  • Article PDFs can be printed
USD 416.00 Add to cart

* Local tax will be added as applicable

Related Research

People also read lists articles that other readers of this article have read.

Recommended articles lists articles that we recommend and is powered by our AI driven recommendation engine.

Cited by lists all citing articles based on Crossref citations.
Articles with the Crossref icon will open in a new tab.