Self Control and Smartphone Use: An Experimental Study of Soft Commitment Devices

Public discussion and discourse amongst researchers suggest that smartphone use is excessive from an individual welfare standpoint, but evidence for this remains limited. I implement a randomized intervention encouraging a subset of 629 participants to adopt soft commitment devices limiting phone, Facebook, and Instagram usage. I find that individuals: (i) spend more time on phones and Facebook than they predict and profess to desire; and (ii) significantly reduce use after adopting these limits. This suggests that individuals may be significantly overusing smartphones due to their limited ability to exercise self-control, and that policy-makers can look to soft commitment devices as effective tools to help individuals reduce use.