Understanding Social Media Use
Faculty Mentor Information
Dr. Traci Craig (Mentor) University of Idaho
Abstract
Losing track of time has been studied in two distinct ways in psychology. Perhaps the most well-known is the experience of flow that was popularized by Csikszentmihalyi in 1990. In the case of flow states, people are so immersed and engaged in what they are doing during a peak performance that they lose awareness of time. From positive psychology, we also have a robust literature on the importance of being present in the moment through mindfulness practice which in turn can improve our performance. Social media use is often viewed as a waste of time. However, under conditions of mindfulness, this activity might actually be considered information gathering. In this study, mindfulness is expected to increase time awareness and recall during social media viewing. We manipulate mindfulness by having participants listen to a guided mindfulness audio clip (or not), then ask them to provide a time estimate while scrolling through social media. Recall measures will be used to determine what they remember from their social media session and accuracy of time estimates will also be recorded. Participants in the mindfulness condition are expected to recall more information from the social media stream and to provide more accurate time estimates.
Understanding Social Media Use
Losing track of time has been studied in two distinct ways in psychology. Perhaps the most well-known is the experience of flow that was popularized by Csikszentmihalyi in 1990. In the case of flow states, people are so immersed and engaged in what they are doing during a peak performance that they lose awareness of time. From positive psychology, we also have a robust literature on the importance of being present in the moment through mindfulness practice which in turn can improve our performance. Social media use is often viewed as a waste of time. However, under conditions of mindfulness, this activity might actually be considered information gathering. In this study, mindfulness is expected to increase time awareness and recall during social media viewing. We manipulate mindfulness by having participants listen to a guided mindfulness audio clip (or not), then ask them to provide a time estimate while scrolling through social media. Recall measures will be used to determine what they remember from their social media session and accuracy of time estimates will also be recorded. Participants in the mindfulness condition are expected to recall more information from the social media stream and to provide more accurate time estimates.