Agency over social media use can be enhanced through brief abstinence, but only in users with high cognitive reflection tendencies

Highlights

• Agency over social media use is an important predictor of behavioral changes.

• I study the effects of several days of social media abstinence on agency.

• I use a pre(t1) -post(t2), control (no abstinence)-treatment (abstinence), cognitive reflection (low vs. high) design.

• At t1, all participants were invoked to reflect on their agency over social media use.

• An increase in perceived agency was produced only in people who experienced abstinence and were high in cognitive reflection.

Abstract

Many social media users have lost some agency over the use of these sites. Restoring this sense of agency is important as it can help users live responsibly with the technology, and can serve as a target for therapists treating people with difficulty to control their social media use. Nevertheless, knowledge about ways to increase people's sense of agency has been limited. In this study I propose that invoking reflections about agency but allowing normal use will likely produce realization about loss of agency, and result in undesirable reduced sense of agency. In contrast, I suggest that if invoking reflections on agency is followed by a brief abstinence attempt, people will process insights on their actual ability to exert control over social media use, which will result in an increase in perceived agency. I further argue that this information processing will only accrue in people high in cognitive reflection tendencies. A 2 (time: pre vs. post) by 2 (condition: abstinence vs. control) by 2 (cognitive reflection group: low vs. high) experiment with 610 Facebook users showed an increase in agency only among high cognitive reflection participants who experienced abstinence; all other groups showed decline in perceived agency. Implications are discussed.