Digital self‐control interventions for distracting media multitasking ‐ A systematic review.

Digital distractions can interfere with goal attainment and lead to undesirable habits that are hard to get red rid of. Various digital self‐control interventions promise support to alleviate the negative impact of digital distractions. These interventions use different approaches, such as the block...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Computer Assisted Learning Vol. 37; no. 5; pp. 1217 - 1232
Main Authors: Biedermann, Daniel, Schneider, Jan, Drachsler, Hendrik
Format: equations & formulas pictorial research systematic review tables/charts Journal Article
Published: Wiley-Blackwell Oct2021
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
fields @attributes:
  recordID: 1
pdfLink:
plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=152209145&site=ehost-live
header:
  @attributes:
    shortDbName: ccm
    uiTerm: 152209145
    longDbName: CINAHL Complete
    uiTag: AN
  controlInfo:
    bkinfo:
    dissinfo:
    jinfo:
      jid:
        02664909
        6M1
      jtl: Journal of Computer Assisted Learning
      issn: 02664909
      maglogo: Y
    pubinfo:
      dt: Oct2021
      vid: 37
      iid: 5
      pid: 480
      pub: Wiley-Blackwell
      place: Malden, Massachusetts
    artinfo:
      ui:
        152209145
        151862621
        152209145
        152209145
        10.1111/jcal.12581
        152209145
      ppf: 1217
      ppct: 15
      formats:
      tig:
        atl: Digital self‐control interventions for distracting media multitasking ‐ A systematic review.
      aug:
        au:
          Biedermann, Daniel
          Schneider, Jan
          Drachsler, Hendrik
        affil: Information Center for Education, DIPF Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
      sug:
        subj:
          Computer-Assisted Instruction
          Multitasking Behavior Prevention and Control
          Distraction
          Self Regulation
          Program Evaluation
          Human
          Systematic Review
          PubMed
          Descriptive Statistics
          Information Technology
          Computers and Computerization
          Instant Messaging
          Goal Attainment
          Mobile Applications
          Goal-Setting
          Checklists
          Funding Source
      ab: Digital distractions can interfere with goal attainment and lead to undesirable habits that are hard to get red rid of. Various digital self‐control interventions promise support to alleviate the negative impact of digital distractions. These interventions use different approaches, such as the blocking of apps and websites, goal setting, or visualizations of device usage statistics. While many apps and browser extensions make use of these features, little is known about their effectiveness. This systematic review synthesizes the current research to provide insights into the effectiveness of the different kinds of interventions. From a search of the 'ACM', 'Springer Link', 'Web of Science', 'IEEE Xplore' and 'Pubmed' databases, we identified 28 digital self‐control interventions. We categorized these interventions according to their features and their outcomes. The interventions showed varying degrees of effectiveness, and especially interventions that relied purely on increasing the participants' awareness were barely effective. For those interventions that sanctioned the use of distractions, the current literature indicates that the sanctions have to be sufficiently difficult to overcome, as they will otherwise be quickly dismissed. The overall confidence in the results is low, with small sample sizes, short study duration, and unclear study contexts. From these insights, we highlight research gaps and close with suggestions for future research. Lay Description: What is already known about this topic?: Learners spend a considerable amount of time using digital distractions like social media or video websites.Excessive media multitasking with digital distractions is associated with worse academic performance.There is a variety of digital self‐control interventions that aimto alleviate the negative impact of digital distractions.These tools rely on vastly different mechanisms with unknown effectiveness. What this paper adds?: This review provides an overview of the evidence for existing digital self‐control interventions.The interventions utilize different attention pathways, and they use varying degrees of strictness to reduce access to digital distractions.Interventions that rely purely on usage visualizations are not effective at reducing usage of digital distractions.Blocking mechanisms are implemented with varying strictness..Blocking that is negotiable only works if it is not too easy to overcome. Implications for practice and/or policy: Effectiveness for many populations (e.g. adolescents) should be evaluated.Research that evaluates self‐control interventions in an explicit learning context is needed.Interventions must sanction deviations from intended behavior in a manner that cannot be easily ignored with just a few clicks.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype:
        equations & formulas
        pictorial
        research
        systematic review
        tables/charts
        Journal Article
      ougenre: Article
    language: English
    refInfo:
    holdings:
      @attributes:
        islocal: N