Digital Overload among College Students: Implications for Mental Health App Use

Arielle C Smith,C Barr Taylor,Beth K Jaworski,Melissa M Vázquez,Ellen E Fitzsimmons-Craft,Shiri Sadeh-Sharvit,Naira Topooco,Bianca Depietro,Grace E Monterubio,Andrea K Graham,Lauren A Fowler,Katherine N Balantekin,Denise E Wilfley,Marie-Laure Firebaugh

doi:10.3390/socsci10080279

Abstract

Mental health phone applications (apps) provide cost-effective, easily accessible support for college students, yet long-term engagement is often low. Digital overload, defined as information burden from technological devices, may contribute to disengagement from mental health apps. This study aimed to explore the influence of digital overload and phone use preferences on mental health app use among college students, with the goal of informing how notifications could be designed to improve engagement in mental health apps for this population. A semi-structured interview guide was developed to collect quantitative data on phone use and notifications as well as qualitative data on digital overload and preferences for notifications and phone use. Interview transcripts from 12 college students were analyzed using thematic analysis. Participants had high daily phone use and received large quantities of notifications. They employed organization and management strategies to filter information and mitigate the negative effects of digital overload. Digital overload was not cited as a primary barrier to mental health app engagement, but participants ignored notifications for other reasons. Findings suggest that adding notifications to mental health apps may not substantially improve engagement unless additional factors are considered, such as users’ motivation and preferences.

Highlights

The aim of this study was to explore how digital overload and other phone use factors might relate to the use of mental health apps among college students
Our findings provide a nuanced account of college students’ general phone use, phone organization, experiences with notifications, use of apps for mental health purposes, integration of mental health apps, and suggestions for improving integration and engagement
Similar to other studies (Roberts et al 2014; Andrews et al 2015; David et al 2018; Ataş and Çelik 2019), we found that college students spent a lot of time on their phones—almost nine hours a day, on average

Summary

Introduction

College administrators have been tasked with the challenge of providing mental health services to the growing number of students in need. Mobile health (mHealth) technologies, which include smartphone applications (apps) for mental health, provide a unique mode for the scalable delivery of mental health support services to college students (Johnson and Kalkbrenner 2017; Lattie et al 2019). While the self-report and objective data on young adults’ phone screen time varies across studies, college students are consistently spending multiple hours on their phones daily (Roberts et al 2014; Andrews et al 2015; David et al 2018; Ataş and Çelik 2019), suggesting that using a mental health app aligns with the existing behavioral routines of this population

Objectives

Results

Conclusion