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

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.