Psychology Meets Reality: Changing My Online Habits
As a college junior, I enrolled in a psychology course called Behavioral Interventions and worked on a semester-long project in which I tried to change one behavior of mine. For my project, I attempted to decrease my social media screen time from the approximately four hours I was averaging daily to around two and a half hours in hopes of giving me more time to focus on my academic work and extracurricular activities.
Using Operant Conditioning
Over the semester, I applied psychological techniques like operant conditioning and environmental management to my behavior in order to modify it. When employing operant conditioning, I gave myself a sticker each day that I accomplished my behavior goal of only using social media for a maximum of two and a half hours. Once I collected a certain amount of stickers, I rewarded myself with a new bag, thus using positive reinforcement to influence my behavior. This technique was incredibly effective in decreasing my overall screen time, as I valued a new bag over continued scrolling.
Employing Environmental Management
Additionally, I utilized environmental management to shape my social media use. I set a screen time limit on certain social media apps like TikTok and Instagram, and these limits notified me when I had surpassed two and a half hours on them. Simply having that reminder made me more conscious of the time I spent scrolling and made it easier for me to log off social media once the screen time limit was reached.
Tracking and Analyzing My Social Media Use
Every day, I also tracked my screen time in an Excel spreadsheet to measure any changes in my behavior. For my final write-up, I analyzed this data by making several different graphs that displayed my total and app-specific social media use. Graphing the data allowed me to further investigate which psychological techniques were the most effective and what events in my life corresponded with changes in my screen time (for example, I exhibited increased social media use during spring break as compared to the rest of the Spring semester).
Through this project, I was able to apply psychological concepts to real life situations and my own personal behavior. Moreover, this assignment helped to improve my project management and research skills, as it was a sustained endeavor that required my consistent recording and analyzing of data. The organizational skills I used in this project, like tracking data in Excel, have also been applicable to other projects I’ve taken on, such as a long-form fiction piece written for an English class of mine.
