SIG HIC - Human Computer Interaction
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Paper Type
Complete
Paper Number
1416
Description
Social media overuse is becoming prevalent across the globe, hurting users’ mental health and productivity. To reduce social media usage and improve productivity, many users turn to social media blockers, which rely on users to specify a social media reduction goal. However, as there is no empirical evidence and guidance on how users should choose the goal optimally, the user-chosen blocking strategies may not produce the intended benefits. In this study, we introduce two new dimensions of social media reduction goals, namely goal difficulty and goal immediacy, to social media overuse intervention literature. We found that goal difficulty moderates the effect of social media reduction on productivity. Specifically, we found that a complete block of social media reduces the users’ productive time during work hours. Easier goals (partial block) in general increase the productive time, however, the effect size depends on the combination of goal difficulty and individual social media consumption level. Finally, we found that changing goal immediacy from radical (immediately enforcing the specified goal difficulty) to incremental (gradually reaching the specified goal difficulty over time) significantly improves the performance of relatively difficult goals, especially for users with higher prior social media consumption levels. As such, to avoid a negative effect on productivity, the combination of goal difficulty and goal immediacy must be carefully chosen based on individual characteristics. Practical implications are discussed.
Recommended Citation
Chen, Zenan and Chan, Jason, "Less is Not Always More: Improving Productivity with Social Media Blockers" (2022). AMCIS 2022 Proceedings. 6.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2022/sig_hci/sig_hci/6
Less is Not Always More: Improving Productivity with Social Media Blockers
Social media overuse is becoming prevalent across the globe, hurting users’ mental health and productivity. To reduce social media usage and improve productivity, many users turn to social media blockers, which rely on users to specify a social media reduction goal. However, as there is no empirical evidence and guidance on how users should choose the goal optimally, the user-chosen blocking strategies may not produce the intended benefits. In this study, we introduce two new dimensions of social media reduction goals, namely goal difficulty and goal immediacy, to social media overuse intervention literature. We found that goal difficulty moderates the effect of social media reduction on productivity. Specifically, we found that a complete block of social media reduces the users’ productive time during work hours. Easier goals (partial block) in general increase the productive time, however, the effect size depends on the combination of goal difficulty and individual social media consumption level. Finally, we found that changing goal immediacy from radical (immediately enforcing the specified goal difficulty) to incremental (gradually reaching the specified goal difficulty over time) significantly improves the performance of relatively difficult goals, especially for users with higher prior social media consumption levels. As such, to avoid a negative effect on productivity, the combination of goal difficulty and goal immediacy must be carefully chosen based on individual characteristics. Practical implications are discussed.
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