UMSI Master's Thesis: Self-control and technology usage

Abstract

Excessive technology usage has been gaining more attention for the past decades. While empowering human productivity, digital activities are also trapping people into overly long and intensive usage especially to the younger generations (Twenge,2017). In order to moderate tech-usage and maintain good digital hygiene, one’s self-control capability plays a great role. This paper aims to explore 2 self-control strategies’ effect on people’s technology usage. A mixed methodology of semi-structured interviews and single-case experiment was conducted on 14 graduate school students who heavily rely on digital platforms for work and study. Both quantitative data of participants’ actual non-productive length ratio and qualitative data of the 28 interviews were analyzed. The non-productive ratio remained at the same level for both strategies.More in-depth discussions around the distraction sources, distracted reasons and the 2 strategies effect are provided in the qualitative affinity analysis. Possible recommendations for future improvement on moderate tech-usage are also discussed.