ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2023
Directing smartphone use through the self-nudge app one sec.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Promoting Self-Regulated Social Media Use on Smartphones With a Mobile Intervention App (Wellspent): Randomized Controlled Trial.JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2026Trial
- Effects of an intervention targeting social media app use on well-being outcomes: A randomized controlled trial.Applied psychology. Health and well-being · 2025Trial
- Digital media balance and mental health: effects of a school-based program.Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health · 2026Article
- Adolescent social media use and its association with mental health: a cross-sectional study in Bradford, England.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Restoring Engagement in Digital Self-Control Tools Using Nudge Reconfiguration Prompts: Quasi-Experimental Study.JMIR formative research · 2026Article
- Recreational Screen Time at University Entry and Mental Health and Well-Being Over First Year: U-Flourish Student Well-Being Research: Temps d'écran à des fins de divertissement au moment de l'entrée à l'université, santé mentale et bien-être au cours de la première année : programme de recherche U-Flourish sur le bien-être des étudiants.Canadian journal of psychiatry. Revue canadienne de psychiatrie · 2026Article
- Understanding the impact of misinformation on adolescents.Nature human behaviour · 2026Review
- Is dancing with care a possible solution to problematic smartphone use among middle-aged and older adults? A cross-sectional study.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Wellbeing skills strengthening as a model for healthy adolescent digital technology use.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Review
- Independently testing prosocial interventions: Methods and recommendations from 31 researchers.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Review
- Social media interventions to improve well-being.Nature human behaviour · 2025Review
- Ambivalent User Needs as a Challenge and Chance for the Design of a Web-Based Intervention for Gaming Disorder: Qualitative Interview Study With Adolescents and Young Adults.JMIR formative research · 2025Article
- A framework for promoting online prosocial behavior via digital interventions.Communications psychology · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Research suggests various associations of smartphone use with a range of physical, psychological, and performance dimensions. Here, we test one sec, a self-nudging app that is installed by the user in order to reduce the mindless use of selected target apps on the smartphone. When users attempt to open a target app of their choice, one sec interferes with a pop-up, which combines a deliberation message, friction by a short waiting time, and the option to dismiss opening the target app. In a field-experiment, we collected behavioral user data from 280 participants over 6 wk, and conducted two surveys before and after the intervention span. one sec reduced the usage of target apps in two ways. First, on average 36% of the times participants attempted opening a target app, they closed that app again after one sec interfered. Second, over the course of 6 wk, users attempted to open target apps 37% less than in the first week. In sum, one sec decreased users' actual opening of target apps by 57% after six consecutive weeks. Afterward, participants also reported spending less time with their apps and indicated increased satisfaction with their consumption. To disentangle one sec's effects, we tested its three psychological features in a preregistered online experiment (N = 500) that measured the consumption of real and viral social media video clips. We found that providing the additional option to dismiss the consumption attempt had the strongest effect. While the friction by time delay also reduced consumption instances, the deliberation message was not effective.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.