A study released in Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction explored when and why people tend to regret utilizing various features of social media applications on their smartphones.
29 mobile app users in early adulthood had installed the application Finesse, allowing it to gather data within the smartphone for a span of one week. The app would ask users which features they regretted using during their smartphone use.
“We examine regretful feature uses in four smartphone social media apps (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and KakaoTalk) by utilizing feature usage logs, ESM surveys on regretful use collected for a week, and retrospective interviews from 29 Android users,” according to the study’s authors.
Researchers showed that the users had regretted at least a partial sum of their social media use in 60 percent of sessions, regretting nearly all of its use in nearly 40 percent of sessions.
“This crystal-clear evidence really showed the users how they were using social media apps and how it made them feel,” one co-author of the study affirmed in his findings.
“It not only increased self-awareness of their own behavior but also provided good information to build an actionable plan.”
