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Publication
Raising awareness of smartphone overuse among university students: a persuasive systems approach
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Authors
Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Smartphone overuse can lead to a series of physical, mental and social disturbances.
This problem is more prevalent among young adults as compared to other demographic groups.
Additionally, university students are already undergoing high cognitive loads and stress conditions;
therefore, they are more susceptible to smartphone addiction and its derived problems. In this
paper, we present a novel approach where a conversational mobile agent uses persuasive messages
exploring the reflective mind to raise users’ awareness of their usage and consequently induce
reduction behaviors. We conducted a four-week study with 16 university students undergoing
stressful conditions—a global lockdown during their semester—and evaluated the impact of the
agent on smartphone usage reduction and the perceived usefulness of such an approach. Results
show the efficacy of self-tracking in the behavior change process: 81% of the users reduced their
usage time, and all of them mentioned that having a conversational agent alerting them about their
usage was useful. Before this experiment, only 68% of them considered such an approach could be
useful. In conclusion, users deemed it essential to have an engaging conversational agent on their
smartphones, in terms of helping them become more aware of usage times.
Description
Keywords
Human-computer interaction Persuasive interfaces Conversational agents Behavior change Smartphone overuse Digital wellbeing . Faculdade de Ciências Exatas e da Engenharia
Citation
Abreu, C., & Campos, P. F. (2022, February). Raising Awareness of Smartphone Overuse among University Students: A Persuasive Systems Approach. In Informatics (Vol. 9, No. 1, p. 15). MDPI.
Publisher
MDPI