Digital White Spaces: A Cyberpsychology-Informed Framework to Mobile Phone Addiction
Addresses the societal and public-health problem of mobile-phone overuse and attention fragmentation.
This editorial synthesizes evidence on mobile-phone addiction and proposes the 'Digital White Spaces' framework to restore cognitive autonomy by combining monitoring, AI detection, interventions, and signal-limited zones.
Mobile-phone overuse and attention fragmentation have become pressing societal and public-health concerns. Cyberpsychology research highlights addictive engagement loops driven by intermittent rewards, persuasive design, and habit formation. In this editorial I synthesize current evidence on mobile-phone addiction and propose "Digital White Spaces" (DWS), a socio-technical framework that combines privacy-preserving monitoring, AI-driven detection of addictive loops, device-mode interventions, and physical signal-limited zones to restore cognitive autonomy.