Digitally connected, socially disconnected: The effects of relying on technology rather than other people

Highlights

• We assessed the costs and benefits of relying on smartphones for information.

• People were randomly assigned to look for a building with or without their phones.

• People relying on their phones found the building faster and felt happier.

• Participants using phones talked to fewer people and felt less socially connected.

• On-the-go information is useful but has a hidden cost: missed social opportunities.

Abstract

In less than a decade, smartphones have transformed how, when, and where people access information. We propose that turning to technology for information may lead individuals to miss out on opportunities to cultivate feelings of social connection. Testing this hypothesis, we asked participants to find an unfamiliar building and randomly assigned them to solve this everyday problem either with or without their smartphones. Compared to those who could not rely on technology, participants who used their smartphones found the building more easily but ended up feeling less socially connected. Although having access to smartphones improved participants’ mood by making their task easier, this beneficial effect was diminished by the costs to social connection. Our findings provide the first experimental evidence that the benefits of pervasive connectivity may be undercut when technology supplants social interactions.

Introduction

Smartphones are the first thing many Americans report reaching for when they wake up in the morning—beating out coffee or even their own significant others, according to a recent survey (Braun Research Inc, 2015). In the same nationally representative survey, almost half of Americans admitted that they could not go a day without their smartphones. Smartphones provide unprecedented access to information, enabling individuals to harness the full resources of the Internet from anywhere. But could this omnipresent access to information carry unforeseen consequences for the fabric of social life?

Smartphones represent a new branch in the evolution of information technology because of two defining characteristics. First, unlike many other computing devices, smartphones are portable and constantly accessible, pervading people's daily lives (Pew Research Center, 2015). Second, unlike other portable sources of information—from simple cell phones to newspapers and maps—smartphones provide connectivity to limitless information on-demand, enabling people to solve a wide variety of everyday problems. It is this pervasive connectivity that theoretically sets smartphones apart from any preceding information tool. There is a great deal of public debate (e.g., Schwartz, 2015, Turkle, 2011, Turkle, 2015), but a dearth of rigorous experimental research on the effects of this emerging technological revolution for social and emotional well-being.

Most existing research relevant to the effects of phones on well-being has focused on apps that are explicitly designed to enable people to connect with others through messaging and social media (e.g., Guillory et al., 2015, Hall and Baym, 2012, Pielot et al., 2014, Pollet et al., 2011, Valkenburg and Peter, 2007). In contrast, very little research has explored whether the use of smartphones for information-seeking (e.g., search engines, Google Maps, Apple Maps) might also influence social outcomes and emotional well-being. And the few existing studies rely on correlational methods, which cannot establish causality (e.g., Kushlev & Proulx, 2016). In the present research, we used experimental methods to investigate how relying on smartphones for information would shape social and emotional well-being. We propose that by enabling people to rely on technology for information anywhere, smartphones may obviate the need for people to rely on each other, thereby leading them to miss out on opportunities to foster a sense of connectedness. We explored this idea by asking participants to solve an everyday problem: finding an unfamiliar building either with or without their smartphones. We chose this particular task because people rank finding directions amongst the most indispensable functions of smartphones (Pew Research Center, 2015).