A great book is commonly something that can transport us into the world portrayed in the story. A recent study from the University of Washington explores whether social media can create a similar state of dissociation with the actual world around us.

The research found that people did indeed appear to “space out” somewhat as they scrolled through their social feed. They then experimented with some design-based interventions to help users retain control again.

Losing control

The researchers identify various forms of dissociation, such as everyday dissociation and trauma-based dissociation. The researchers focused their attention on everyday dissociation, especially during the early period of the Covid pandemic when people spent more time on their devices due to the initial lockdown measures.

“Dissociation is defined by being completely absorbed in whatever it is you’re doing,” the researchers explain. “But people only realize that they’ve dissociated in hindsight. So once you exit dissociation there’s sometimes this feeling of: How did I get here? It’s like when people on social media realize: ‘Oh my gosh, how did 30 minutes go by? I just meant to check one notification.’”

The experiment was conducted via a custom built app, called Chirp, which was linked with the Twitter account of each volunteer. The users’ tweets and likes appeared on the real Twitter, but the researchers were able to control the experience of each volunteer by adding new features or giving them quick surveys to complete.

“One of the questions we had was: What happens if we rebuild a social media platform so that it continues to offer what people like about it, but it is designed with an explicit goal of keeping the user in control of their time and attention?” the authors explain.

“How does a user’s experience with this redesigned app compare to their experience with the status quo in digital well-being design, that is, adding an outside lockout mechanism or timer to police their usage?”

Zoning out

The volunteers were asked to use Chirp for a month and every fifteen minutes were shown a dialog box asking them rate how much they were really paying attention to what they were doing on a scale of one to five.

“We used their rating as a way to measure dissociation,” the researchers explain. “It captured the experience of being really absorbed and not paying attention to what’s around you, or of scrolling on your phone without paying attention to what you’re doing.”

During the month, nearly half of the volunteers agreed that they had become dissociated at least once. The researchers then tested a range of intervention strategies. These strategies were divided into two categories, the first of which made changes to the app’s design and the second that made changes to the availability of the app via lockouts or timers. Users spent one week with no interventions, one week with each of the two types of intervention, and then the final week with both.

Changing habits

The results suggest that people seem to prefer changes to the app’s design, as these allowed them to better focus on the things, and the people, that really mattered to them.

“One of our interview participants says that it felt safer to use Chirp when they had these interventions. Even though they use Twitter for professional purposes, they found themselves getting sucked into this rabbit hole of content,” the researchers explain. “Having a stop built into a list meant that it was only going to be a few minutes of reading and then, if they wanted to really go crazy, they could read another list. But again, it’s only a few minutes. Having that bite-sized piece of content to consume was something that really resonated.”

Obviously the platforms themselves have an explicit incentive to ensure people stay consumed by them for as long as possible and are therefore designed to keep people scrolling for as long as possible.

“When we are in a dissociative state, we have a diminished sense of agency, which makes us more vulnerable to those designs, and we lose track of time,” the authors conclude. “These platforms need to create an end-of-use experience, so that people can have it fit in their day with their time-management goals.”