On October 9, 2019 Dr. Kushlev presented Is Your Smartphone Making You Unhappy? Not Exactly at the American Psychological Association’s Innovation in Washington, DC.
In the APS Observer, Nathan DeWall provides a useful classroom activity to help students become aware of their smartphone use based on Dr. Kushlev’s latest research.
Read the full article by Nathan DeWall here!
Smartphones provide people with a variety of benefits, but they may also impose subtle social costs. We propose that being constantly connected undercuts the emotional benefits of face-to-face social interactions in two ways…
In the U.S., 95% of smartphone users admit to having used their smartphones during their latest social gathering. Although smartphones are designed to connect us with others, such smartphone use may create a source of distraction that disconnects us from the people in our immediate social environment. Focusing on one fundamental social relationship—between parents and their children—we examined whether smartphones made parents feel distracted…
Since ancient times, scholars, individuals, and societies have been preoccupied with the pursuit of happiness. But might individual happiness actually be bad for society and the world? A common concern – which we refer to as the Pollyanna hypothesis – is that happy people might be too happy to care enough about important current issues, thus being less likely to act on improving society and the world…