The Interaction of Mobile Technology Use with Social Facets of Self-Regulatory Control and Common Executive Function

Abstract

Widespread availability of digital tools has changed the daily lives of college students. Yet, the intricacies underlying these digital ecosystems and their relationship to psychological functioning, particularly among these younger ‘digital native’ age cohorts, are still unclear. A growing body of work points to associations between digital media behaviors and the capacity for top-down self-regulatory control over thoughts, emotions, and behavior. Behavioral scientists often subdivide this skillset into separate psychological constructs with different labels (e.g., cognitive control, executive functioning, emotion regulation), and use a varied array of tasks and surveys to index its subcomponents. The general finding from across behavioral studies is that groups (and individuals) with weaker executive functioning (EF) skills also tend to exhibit heavier and more problematic digital media habits (e.g., excessive, or addiction-like use). This is presumably because the inability to reliably exert control makes one more prone to impulsive engagement with digital media (e.g., frequent phone-checking), greater attentional distractibility in response to media-associated cues (e.g., notifications), and more difficulty with sustaining goal-relevant behaviors in the presence of digital media. However, there has also been empirical work suggesting null and even positive or nonlinear relationships between digital media use and EF. The current study aimed to address these seemingly opposing sets of findings by examining how, and to what extent, individual differences in one’s self- and mobile-reported smartphone habits relate with specific facets of higher-order cognition. In our examination of the interplay between these factors, we found consistent patterns emerge between subjective measures of everyday and problematic smartphone use and common non-social executive functioning skills. Furthermore, we also found evidence indicating an overlapping pattern of findings highlighting the relationships between one’s cognizance toward their actual mobile usage habits and specific facets of socially oriented self-regulation.