The Effects of Smartphones on Well-Being: Theoretical Integration and Research Agenda
This work addresses the impact of smartphone usage on human well-being for researchers and policymakers, but it is incremental as it synthesizes existing ideas without presenting new empirical results.
The paper tackles the problem of understanding how smartphones affect well-being by proposing a theoretical framework integrating three hypotheses—displacement, interference, and complementarity—to reconcile contradictory findings and guide future research.
As smartphones become ever more integrated in peoples lives, a burgeoning new area of research has emerged on their well-being effects. We propose that disparate strands of research and apparently contradictory findings can be integrated under three basic hypotheses, positing that smartphones influence well-being by (1) replacing other activities (displacement hypothesis), (2) interfering with concurrent activities (interference hypothesis), and (3) affording access to information and activities that would otherwise be unavailable (complementarity hypothesis). Using this framework, we highlight methodological issues and go beyond net effects to examine how and when phones boost versus hurt well-being. We examine both psychological and contextual mediators and moderators of the effects, thus outlining an agenda for future research.