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Today there are tests to measure your internet addiction, as well as features that allow you to know the time spent on this or that social network. American researchers, however, wanted to go further by developing a new tool capable of measuring dependence on digital media, whatever the revolutions to come, revealing that students are not as addicted to them as one might think.
“We wanted to create a tool that was immediately useful for use and research, reflected current knowledge about how digital addiction works, and did not become obsolete when the next big technological change occurred.“says Daniel Hipp of Binghamton University. in a press release. As we will have understood, the idea here is to anticipate the next changes in digital technology, and to ensure that we can help users gauge their dependence on these platforms.
To do this, researchers teamed up with the Digital Media Treatment and Education Center in Boulder to develop the “Digital Media Overuse Scale” (dMOS), in other words a scale of overuse of digital media. This tool would allow clinicians and researchers to use it to carry out broad searches, for example based on social networks, or to refine them, for example by focusing more specifically on Instagram, based on the information that ‘they wish to obtain. This new tool was tested via a survey carried out among more than 1,000 students, the objective being to evaluate their behavior in five areas: general use of smartphones, consumption of online videos, use of social media , gaming, and the use of pornography.
Worrying behavior among a minority
Surprisingly, among the main lessons of this work, the researchers observed only “few indicators of dependence or overuse” of digital media among the majority of students. However, the responses of certain participants are similar to forms of addiction. “Overall, the results reveal that overuse is not a general phenomenon; respondents typically reported overuse in only one or a few areas, such as social media“, explains Professor Peter Gerhardstein, who participated in this work. And adds: “The data paints a picture of a segment of the population that uses digital media substantially, and social media in particular, at a level that raises concerns about overuse issues“.
The researchers behind this digital media overuse scale present it as a “reliable, valid and extensible” tool, capable of providing appropriate and fair indications. “Rather than focusing on technology, we incorporated a set of ‘skeletal’ psychology-focused questions into the scale. For example, a typical question is ‘I have trouble stopping myself from using X even though I know I should’. By replacing ‘X’ with another area of technology, like social media or gaming, we can ask the same question about several different areas of technology. And we can replace X in future studies with new technology areas as they emerge“, specifies Daniel Hipp.
To continue their research, the scientists are already experimenting with the scale with two other technological areas, without specifying which ones, and intend to initiate collaborations with other researchers to “improve our collective understanding of how human psychology relates to the rapidly changing digital media landscape“.