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What Makes Smartphone Use Meaningful or Meaningless?

KAI LUKOFF, University of Washington
CISSY YU, Brown University
JULIE KIENTZ, University of Washington
ALEXIS HINIKER, University of Washington
Prior research indicates that many people wish to limit aspects of their smartphone use. Why is it that certain
smartphone use feels so meaningless? We examined this question by using interviews, the experience sampling
method, and mobile logging of 86,402 sessions of app use. One motivation for use (habitual use to pass the time) and
two types of use (entertainment and passive social media) were associated with a lower sense of meaningfulness. In
interviews, participants reported feeling a loss of autonomy when using their phone in these ways. These reports were
corroborated by experience sampling data showing that motivation to achieve a specific purpose declined over the
course of app use, particularly for passive social media and entertainment usage. In interviews, participants pointed
out that even when smartphone use itself was meaningless, it could sometimes still be meaningful in the context of
broader life as a ‘micro escape’ from negative situations. We discuss implications for how mobile apps can be used and
designed to reduce meaningless experiences.
CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing~Empirical studies in ubiquitous and mobile computing • Human-centered
computing~Mobile computing • Human-centered computing~Smartphones;

Additional Key Words and Phrases: Meaning; eudaimonia; habits; self-regulation; positive computing; persuasive design; uses &
gratifications; social media
ACM Reference Format:
Kai Lukoff, Cissy Yu, Julie Kientz, and Alexis Hiniker. 2018. What Makes Smartphone Use Meaningful or Meaningless? Proc. ACM
Interact. Mob. Wearable Ubiquitous Technol. 2, 1, Article 22 (March 2018), 26 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3191754

1 INTRODUCTION
Just as with keys and wallets, many people cannot leave home without their smartphones. Yet many
also express dissatisfaction with the time they spend attached to their phone [33,77]. Users wish they
could give up Twitter [74], hope to spend less time on Facebook in the coming year [62], and say that if
they could change one thing about the way they use their phone, it would be to cut back on the use of one
or more specific apps [24]. They install tools like Freedom, Forest, and RescueTime to block, limit, and
monitor access to selected apps. They read popular science books like Deep Work [54], Irresistible [1], and
The Distraction Addiction [57] that advise how to curb digital distractions. A few even join movements like
Time Well Spent [85], which seeks to take back control from “the technology hijacking our minds.” While
users adopt these technologies of their own volition, some report that these experiences lack meaning
and that they wish they could change their behavior.

Authors’ addresses: K. Lukoff, 428 Sieg Hall, Campus Box 352315, Seattle, WA 98195, USA; email: [email protected]; C. Yu, email:
[email protected]; J. Kientz, 428 Sieg Hall, Campus Box 352315, Seattle, WA 98195, USA; email: [email protected]; A. Hiniker, The
Information School, Box 352840, Mary Gates Hall, Ste 370, Seattle, WA 98195, USA; email: [email protected].

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Anxiety about new technology is at least 2000 years old. According to Plato, Socrates believed that the
technology of writing would erode memory and thereby Greek poetry and thinking [13]. In the 1990s,
personal computers prompted concerns about addictions to online pornography, gaming, and shopping.
In the 2000s, The BlackBerry, which popularized email on mobile devices, was nicknamed the
“CrackBerry” for its addictive nature [50]. So it is no surprise that today’s smartphones raise concerns too.
Supporting smartphone users who express dissatisfaction requires a nuanced understanding of when
and why users are dissatisfied. Understanding the usage patterns that leave people frustrated with their
own choices has the potential to help users shape the strategies they use to manage their usage behaviors.
It also has the potential to help designers avoid design patterns that satisfy short-term metrics (e.g., time
spent in the app) at the expense of long-term declines in user satisfaction.
To understand user dissatisfaction, one common approach is to examine which types of media use
leave people ‘feeling bad’. In studies of media use, this negative feeling is often measured in terms of
emotional valence [6,37,78]. This approach aligns with a hedonistic tradition that views subjective well-
being (and sometimes happiness too) in terms of affect balance: the presence of positive affect and
absence of negative affect [2]. Yet affect balance alone may not fully capture why people are dissatisfied
with aspects of their smartphone use [46].
Another way to study well-being is to follow the eudaimonic tradition, which focuses on living life with
a sense of fulfillment and meaning [17]. In this study, we focus on the construct of meaningfulness, a key
component of the eudaimonic conception of well-being. It is true that meaningfulness is positively related
to affect balance: most meaningful experiences also make us feel good. However, the two concepts still
differ in important ways [4,83]. For example, scrolling through pictures of adorable kittens might cheer
one up, but feel meaningless. Conversely, messaging one’s ex-girlfriend to apologize might be a sad
experience, but meaningful. In contrast to hedonic happiness, people associate meaningfulness with
giving rather than taking in relationships, enduring unpleasant experiences in pursuit of future goals, and
reflecting one’s ideal self [4].
The field of positive psychology made great progress in understanding how to cultivate happiness in
the hedonic sense, yet it is only more recently that scholarship has turned to the eudaimonic notion of
meaningfulness [4]. Similarly, in positive computing [12], valuable work has investigated happiness, often
drawing upon the sensing technologies advanced by affective computing [11], yet there seems to be less
emphasis on studying meaningfulness. This paper focuses on the construct of meaningfulness as a key
consideration when designing for human flourishing.
Using a Uses and Gratifications (U&G) perspective [65], we explored the meaning, or lack thereof, that
people derive from their smartphones through interviews with users and log data capturing their
experiences in the moment. We built a mobile app that logged app use and used the experience sampling
method (ESM) [16] to capture the behavior of 45 smartphone users for two weeks. We asked smartphone
users about their underlying motivation for phone use at the start of, during, and at the end of specific
instances of app use. Using qualitative data from these ESM prompts and from exit interviews, we
extracted themes about the gratifications users seek as they engage with their phones and the meaning
they draw from these experiences. We then corroborated users’ subjective descriptions of their
experiences through a quantitative analysis of 86,402 sessions of app use and the 9,318 sessions from
which we collected experience samples.
Participants reported that habitual use was typically less meaningful than intentional use. Habit-driven
experiences made users feel a loss of autonomy over their own behavior. Quantitative analysis of log data
was consistent with these themes, showing both that users turn to their phones out of habit and lose track
of their intentions and fall into habitual patterns of engagement with their phone. Participants further
said that they turn to their phones to escape from negative emotions and held mixed opinions about how
well such engagement served them. By examining habit, type of use, and meaning together, we provide
insights into why people choose to engage in behaviors they wish they could change.

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2 BACKGROUND

2.1 Technology Resistance

Though ICT is pervasive and offers enormous value to users, many people feel conflicted about the way
they engage with technology and the amount of time they spend with connected devices. Morrison and
colleagues refer to this as “pushback,” which they define as a user’s resistance to constant connectivity
that he or she once embraced [52,53]. A technology probe to explore personal tracking of time spent with
digital devices found that participants were interested in viewing their usage data, because they wanted
to cut back on overall use and exercise greater self-discipline in resisting the temptation to engage with
technology [63]. Baumer and colleagues describe “lagging resistance” among Facebook users, which they
define as “a sense of wanting to quit but not doing so just yet (p. 8) [5].”
Prior work has described user enactments of pushback and technology resistance. For example,
Schoenebeck documented Twitter users’ anxiety about their social media engagement and their practice
of taking intentional breaks from the site [74]. Pew Research Center reported in 2015 that 61% of U.S.
Facebook users had taken a break from the social networking site (SNS) for “several weeks or more” at
least once in the past year [62], and one of the most common motivations for doing so was users’
frustration over “spending too much time using the site.” Other work describes users committing
“Facebook suicide” by deleting their accounts [59], refraining from smartphone ownership in favor of
traditional feature phones [39], or asking a friend to take over an account [5].
Despite these makeshift attempts at pushing back, other work has shown that people often struggle to
make changes to their usage habits that stick. One study of college students found that participants
wanted to reduce their smartphone use but that the strategies they employed to make this change were
ineffective [33]. Hiniker and colleagues found that nearly half of the parents they surveyed wanted to cut
back on the time they spent using their phone in front of their child but were unable to make this change
[26]. In a three-year ethnography, Mazmanian found that depending on workplace practices, some
employees were able to set limits on their work-related use of technology, while others felt trapped in a
cycle of constant connectivity from which they could not break free [49].
We build on this prior literature by examining users’ sense of meaning as they engage with their
phones. To contextualize how users derive meaning, we collect in-the-moment data on the motivation
underlying particular instances of use.

2.2 Designing for Intentional Technology Use

A growing body of work in HCI investigates the design of tools to support users in curbing their use of
technology. Several investigations have demonstrated that such implementations can broadly reduce an
individual’s overall technology use. For example, one research app leveraged social support techniques to
help groups of college students set limits on their collective phone use [33]. FamiLync enabled parents
and children to cooperate in setting limits on usage [31] and the AppDetox research project enables users
to set rules to block specific apps [43].
Other research projects have sought to support users in cutting back in targeted ways. The
PomodoLock research project supported users in resisting self-interruptions while trying to focus on a
task by locking them out of distraction experiences for short chunks of time [30]. The MyTime app had
users set personal goals and reflect on how they would like to spend their time and then monitored
certain types of phone use [24]. Let’s FOCUS reduced technology-related distractions in classroom
settings [29]. And Lock’n’Lol supported users in self-regulating their use of technology while spending
time with others in person [32].
Collectively, this body of work seeks to support users in turning their “lagging resistance” into active
resistance, in which their desires to make changes to their behavior are actualized. In this project, we

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sought to support the design of such systems by gaining a better understanding of the user needs they
address.

2.3 The Uses and Gratifications Perspective

Historically, new technologies have been examined from a media effects perspective, but beginning the
1950s, communications researchers began to examine people’s motivations for engaging with technology,
rather than simply examining the effects of technology and treating users as passive recipients of media
experiences [69]. The resulting Uses and Gratifications (U&G) theory explains that media use is an active
choice on the part of a user, driven by the user’s desire to seek specific gratifications.
U&G has proven to be a productive frame for understanding users’ experiences with a wide variety of
new technologies. Prior work has drawn on U&G to explain why users engage with VCRs [15], social
media [60], early cellular phones [40], soap operas [68], tablets [47], and many other technologies. While
other work has looked at the gratifications users obtain from their smartphone use (e.g., [25,27]), this
investigation uses them as a lens for examining technology resistance and users’ frustration with their
own behavior.
At a high level, the gratifications users seek from media can be grouped under two motivations:
instrumental motivation, in which the user engages with technology intentionally to achieve a specific
purpose, and habitual motivation, in which the user engages with technology habitually to pass the time
[65,67]. This dichotomy is particularly relevant to this investigation because prior work suggests that
habitual motivation is associated with the types of smartphone use that people would like to reduce. For
example, SNSs are used habitually [64,73] and are common sources of lagging resistance for users [5,25].
Other work shows that apps with high informational rewards lead to checking habits [56]. Thus, it is
possible that the instrumental-habitual divide contributes to the extent to which users draw meaning
from their experiences.
We can also consider the gratifications that users seek from a particular technology at a more detailed
level that may be more actionable for designers of mobile apps. Research studies that collect large
volumes of data about smartphone use tend to rely upon the categories provided by commercial app
stores like Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store [21,81], sometimes making manual adjustments
[9,61]. However, app store categories are only a crude approximation of the gratifications that
smartphone users seek. First, categories can be ambiguous. For instance, the top rankings in the
“Lifestyle” category on the Play Store include apps for dating (e.g., Tinder), retail (e.g., Starbucks), tools
(e.g., Timely Alarm Clock), and religion (e.g., Salatuk - prayer time). Second, any app-level categorization
scheme will not capture how a single app can be used in multiple ways that do not fall under a single
category. For instance, as of August 2017, the top-ranked app in the “Communication” category on the U.S.
Google Play Store was a mobile browser (Chrome), which can be used for communication (e.g., emailing a
friend), but also for information-seeking (e.g., searching on Google) and entertainment (e.g., watching
videos on YouTube). A more user-centered typology is needed to understand what people want when
launching an app.
Instead of app store categories, typologies based on surveys and experiments with users
[8,14,34,35,78] better inform the U&G perspective on smartphone use. Bessiere et al. used surveys and
factor analysis to identify four distinct ways of using the internet: communication with close ties,
communication to meet people, information-seeking, and entertainment [8]. Chan developed a similar
typology for smartphone use, also with 4 types: voice communication, online communication,
information-seeking, and passing time [14]. He found that communicative uses were positively related to
subjective well-being, whereas non-communicative uses were not. Verduyn et al. compared social media
use that was active (direct exchanges) and passive (consuming information), finding that passive
Facebook use led to declines in affective well-being [78]. The types used in this prior work informed the
development of our own U&G typology of smartphone use. In particular, their findings suggest that active

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communication and passive consumption of social media should be seen as distinct types of use that offer
different gratifications.
We build on prior work by using a U&G perspective to examine the meaning that people derive from
smartphone use. We study what smartphone users want at two levels: at a high level, in terms of
instrumental and habitual motivations, and, at a more detailed level, in terms of five different types of use
(see Methods).

2.4 Research Questions

Our research questions were as follows:
RQ 1: Which U&Gs are associated with smartphone use that people find meaningless?
RQ 2: How do U&Gs change as a user engages with an app?

3 METHODS
We used mixed methods to collect both smartphone log data and multiple sources of qualitative data
about users’ experiences. 45 adults living in the United States installed an Android app that logged their
smartphone use and asked them questions about their experience. All participants completed an exit
survey, and 11 also participated in an exit interview.

3.1 Study Design

Recruitment
In June 2017, we recruited 45 U.S. adults from Craigslist (n=34) and university email lists (n=11). We
did not solicit users who had particular desires to reduce smartphone use, but rather wanted to recruit a
general U.S. population. Participants responded to an ad for a study that “tracks the apps you use and asks
you about your experience.” Median age was 28 (range 18-50). 53% identified as men and 47% as
women. Racial identity (non-mutually exclusive) was 77% white, 13% Asian, 4% black, and 9% other,
with 16% of all participants indicating Hispanic/Latino ethnicity. In terms of education, 13% held a high
school degree or equivalent, 36% had completed some college or an associate degree, 36% held a
bachelor’s degree, and 16% had a master’s degree or doctorate. Prior to this general recruitment, we had
also conducted two iterations of pilot testing (n=4, n=5) to ensure that study instructions were clear and
to troubleshoot our study app.
Participants were all Android smartphone owners (version 5.0 or later) who reported using their
phone for at least 30 minutes per day (median=165 minutes). Our study app was made available on the
Google Play Store and required participants to enter an invite code upon installation. Two invited
respondents were unable to install the study app due to technical issues and could not continue as
participants. Participants were compensated with a $75 Amazon gift card and received an additional $25
if they completed the exit interview. This research was reviewed and approved by The University of
Washington’s Institutional Review Board.
Experience Sampling Method (ESM)
Using the android.app.usage API [86], we developed a study app that logged the name, category, date,
time, and duration of each app that a participant used during the study period. The code for the study app
is available on Github [82]. When the study app detected that participants were using their phone, it
asked them short self-report questions as per ESM. Our prompt could be dismissed by pressing the back
button; study instructions informed participants that skipping a prompt in this manner was okay if their
phone use was time-sensitive. Our sampling protocol is shown in Fig. 1 and described in the text that
follows.

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Fig. 1. Sampling protocol for the study app

To capture a diverse set of apps, if an app was sampled, it was not sampled again until after 3 other
apps had been sampled. We were concerned that some messaging apps are checked so frequently (e.g.,
SnapChat) that they would crowd out samples from all other apps [9,72].
The study app prompted participants at one of three random timings: start, during, and end. Each
instance of app use was sampled at a single timing, not at all three, as we expected that the disruption of
our prompt would distort subsequent behavior so that any additional measurement of the same use
would be invalid. Although we never collected more than one sample for any particular instance of app
use, collecting a large number of samples would allow us to stitch together a picture of how user
motivations evolve from the start-to-middle-to-end of app use.
Start samples came at the launch of an app. During samples were requested at a random time between
15-120 seconds of use. If a participant closed an app before reaching that number of seconds, the study
app went back to the beginning of the sampling protocol. We therefore collected fewer samples during
app use than at the other timings. End samples were collected immediately after an app’s window was
closed, provided that the app was used for at least 15 seconds. We selected 15 seconds as the minimum
cutoff, as wanted participants to interact with an app before we questioned them about their experience.
We took guidance from prior literature that found 15 seconds to be the amount of time associated with at
least brief interaction with apps, whereas less time was associated with simply glancing at a device [3].
Again, if an end sample was selected but app use did not reach 15 seconds, the study app reverted to the
beginning of the sampling protocol. This also explains why we collected more samples at the start timing
than at the end timing. So as not to overburden participants, we waited for at least 30 minutes after
sending a prompt (regardless of whether or not it was answered) before sending another one.
We also measured affect as has been done in prior studies of social media use [6,37,78]. Although it
was not the focus of our study, we thought it might yield interesting comparisons against prior work.
Affective state was measured along the two dimensions of the circumplex model of affect [70]: valence (7-
point scale; negative to positive) and arousal (7-point scale; low energy to high energy).
U&G motivation asked whether the participant was using the app instrumentally (“To achieve a
specific goal”) or habitually (“To browse, explore, or pass the time”) as done in [25]. “Not sure” was also
an option.
Our U&G types (see Table 1) were based on prior literature and our own testing. Similar to Bessiere et
al. [8] and Chan [14], we included communication, information, and entertainment as types of use. We
adopted the distinction between active and passive social media use, reusing language from the study
instructions in [78]. In our typology, however, active social media use was subsumed under
communication. Our aim was for participants to include all communicative use under communication,
even if it occurred in apps that are not always regarded as “social media.” For example, chatting with
friends in mobile messaging apps (e.g., WhatsApp). Based on usage behavior in prior studies [9,81], we
added productivity as an additional type. “Not sure” was also included as an option. Although this paper
refers to types of use by their short name (e.g., communication), participants were always shown the full
name in the study app (e.g., communicating or interacting with other people), as listed in Table 1.

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Table 1. U&G types with examples

Type of use
Examples
Short namea Full name
Productivity Getting things done or self- • Checking balance in a banking app
improvement • Logging a run in a MyFitnessPal
Information Getting information • Searching on Google
• Checking the forecast in a weather app
Communication Communicating or interacting • Liking or commenting on Facebook
with other people • Messaging with friends on SnapChat
Entertainment Entertainment • Watching videos on YouTube
• Playing games like Candy Crush
Social media Browsing social media • Scrolling through the newsfeed on Facebook
without interacting with other • Reading friends’ stories on SnapChat
people
Not sure Not sure Anything that doesn’t easily fit into one of the
other categories
a Short names are used in this paper, but participants always saw full names. Participants saw these examples in their training.

To assess our typology, we ran one test of validity and another of reliability. Key methods and results
are presented here; for a detailed explanation please see the supporting materials. To test validity, we
recruited 64 smartphone owners from Amazon Mechanical Turk. We asked participants to describe 3
recent app uses and categorize them according to our typology. In 5 instances, participants used “Not
sure” to classify app uses similar to “recording my gym sessions and bike rides” and “I used the
application called Memrise to self-teach some Japanese.” We therefore broadened productivity from
“Getting things done” to “Getting things done or self-improvement.” We chose not to create additional
types for a few other uses that participants reported difficulty categorizing, such as online shopping (2
cases), flashlight (2 cases), and taking photos (2 cases), as these were less common. We also created
examples that we shared with participants to help them distinguish between types of use (see Table 1).
To test reliability, we recruited 8 new participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk. Thirty cases of app
use were randomly selected from those generated by participants in the test of validity. Each participant
completed a 5-minute training for our revised typology (with examples) and then categorized the 30
cases. Light's Kappa, a measure of interrater reliability for fully crossed designs with more than two
raters [22,42], was 0.74 (where 0.6-0.8 can be interpreted as indicating substantial agreement [79]). The
same online training was later administered to participants who enrolled in the main study.
Meaningfulness was asked as, ‘‘How much do you feel like you have spent your time on something
meaningful?’’ (7-point scale; not at all meaningful – neutral - very meaningful). We did not further define
meaningfulness, as we wanted participants to interpret it as relevant to their own lives, as has been done
in previous research in positive psychology [4]. The same question was asked about Facebook use in [71],
in which answers were found to be highly similar to answers in response to alternate wordings “...wasted
your time?” and “...done something useful?” (Cronbach’s alpha = .91). This question was asked only at the
end timing, as we wanted to allow participants to complete their app use before reflecting upon its
meaningfulness.

3.2 Exit Survey

Participants completed a short exit survey that asked how often they wished to use their phone for
each of our types of use (5-point scale; far less often - the same amount - far more often). Our aim was to

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compare global intention for smartphone use against in-the-moment ESM reports of meaningfulness. We
surveyed global intention at the end of the study rather than the beginning because we did not want this
question to influence ESM reports. However, it should be noted that there may have been an effect in the
opposite direction: after the two-weeks of ESM prompts, participants may have gained greater awareness
and formed new intentions for phone use. The survey also inquired whether participants had experienced
technical difficulties using the study app.

3.3 Exit Interviews

We chose 12 study participants (6 men, 6 women; age range 18-46) to invite to the exit interview using
multistage sampling. In the first stage, we clustered participants into two groups based on gender
identity. In the second stage, we further clustered the two groups into sextiles based on age. We then
randomly selected one participant from each of these 12 groups. One participant was unable to
participate due to schedule conflicts; all other invited participants chose to participate in the interview.
We conducted interviews on the phone, and each lasted about 45 minutes.
In the first part of the interview, we asked participants what they had learned about their smartphone
use, why they found certain types of use to be more or less meaningful, and whether they wanted to make
any changes to their phone-use habits. In the second part of the interview, we made use of a retrospective
interviewing technique [51]. For each participant, we prepared a timeline of their previous 24 hours of
smartphone use, and we reviewed it together with them to contextualize specific instances of phone use
and to better understand how different types of smartphone use fit into their daily life.

3.4 Data Analysis

Interviews
We began our data analysis with the qualitative data from interview recordings that were
professionally transcribed. The first and last author first divided interview transcripts and each
conducted an open-coding of an independent subset. We then met to collaboratively discuss emergent
themes. Using these emergent themes, researchers then repeatedly reviewed transcripts to refine themes
and pull out examples. Using example quotes, we conducted collaborative affinity diagramming,
clustering examples into a collection of cross-cutting themes. We used these to define our quantitative
analysis of ESM and log data by examining whether this log data supported or refuted the themes
generated from our qualitative analysis.
ESM Data
We then proceeded with rough confirmatory analysis using ESM data. Rough confirmatory data
analysis lies between exploratory data analysis and confirmatory data analysis, using probabilistic
approaches such as confidence intervals and significance tests to conduct an initial assessment of
plausible models [7]. We present most of our quantitative results using simple graphical representations.
When we conducted statistical tests, we were interested in variables that were highly significant (p < .01)
and had large effect sizes, and thus should therefore clearly be included in the model. Our quantitative
results should be interpreted as an initial assessment of multiple potential models rather than as
confirmation of a single model.

4 RESULTS
We first present descriptive statistics for the ESM data to characterize the smartphone use of
participants. Participants used apps a total of 86,402 times over the two weeks of the study. We sampled
the experience of participants in 9,318 (10.8%) of app uses. The completed response rate was 86% and
the median time taken to answer a sample was 11 seconds. Participants received a mean of 13.3 prompts

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per day (sd=6.3). Because we sampled only when a participant was using an app, more frequent
smartphone users received more prompts.
Table 2 shows a summary of these ESM samples. The majority of use was instrumental (60.5%) rather
than habitual (39.5%). Communication was the most common type of use (31.3%) and we excluded “Not
Sure” responses from further analysis.

Table 2: Summary of ESM samples of smartphone use

Samples Adjusted
Percentage
Total app uses 86402 100%
Non-ESM 77084 89.2%
ESM 9318 10.8%
Timing
Start 4790 51.4%
During 1578 16.9%
End 2950 31.7%
U&G motivation
Instrumental 4573 60.5%
Habitual 2984 39.5%
Not sure 493 NA
U&G type
Productivity 930 12.4%
Information 1702 22.7%
Communication 2346 31.3%
Entertainment 1401 18.7%
Social media 1106 14.8%
Not sure 551 NA

The summary statistics for our affect and meaningfulness measures are shown in Table 3. There was a
positive bias in emotional valence ratings, which has also been found in prior studies [23].

Table 3: Summary of affect and meaningfulness

Number Mean SD
Affect
Valence 8149 3.4 1.2
Arousal 8149 3.0 1.2
Meaningfulness 2230 3.0 1.4

We also examined whether participants reported using the same app in different ways, which was our
key motivation for developing a typology of smartphone uses and gratifications. Table 4 shows the results
for the 5 apps for which users answered the most ESM prompts. For each app, we list the total number of

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samples and the percentage share by type of use, with the largest share in bold. For example, participants
used Chrome for information-seeking in 50% of samples, with the rest of use spread across
entertainment (20%), social media (11%), communication (10%), and productivity (9%). Among all 66
apps in our dataset with 20 or more samples, we found that the median of the largest share for a type of
use (e.g., information in the Chrome example) was 58%.
These results clearly show that people often use the same app for different types of uses &
gratifications. This would not be evident based on app store categories alone: for example, Gmail is listed
in Communication on Google Play, but in 39% of samples participants responded that their use was best
described as getting information. Snapchat is listed under Social, but in 66% of samples participants
reported that they were engaged in active communication rather than passive social media use. For
researchers who are interested in the different ways that apps are used or are considering adopting a
similar methodology, we anonymized and aggregated this part of the dataset and made it available in the
supporting materials.

Table 4: Top 5 most popular apps and the diverse ways in which they are used

App name Category in Total Producti Informat Commun Entertai Social

Google Play samples vity ion ication nment media
Chrome Communication 701 9% 50% 10% 20% 11%
Facebook Social 476 1% 5% 25% 14% 54%
Gmail Communication 459 12% 39% 31% 10% 8%
Instagram Social 360 2% 5% 26% 21% 46%
Snapchat Social 326 1% 2% 66% 11% 19%

In the exit survey, study participants shared two notable concerns about our experience sampling
protocol. Three participants expressed concern at receiving prompts while they were driving. In the
future, researchers who sample app use on smartphones should consider disabling prompts when people
are using navigation apps. One participant expressed frustration at prompts that occurred during
SnapChat use, when he had limited time to view a friend’s photo before it disappeared. In hindsight, we
would have more strongly emphasized to participants that they were free to dismiss prompts that came
at inopportune times.

4.1 Meaningfulness of Different Types of Use

Participants held similar opinions about which U&G types were more and less meaningful. Productivity
and communication with close ties were mostly considered meaningful, while social media and
entertainment were frequently viewed as meaningless. In the exit survey, participants expressed the
desire to reduce the use of the same U&G types seen as meaningless.
4.1.1 Interview Data
Meaningful Experiences with Smartphones
Participants associated using their smartphone for productivity with a sense of meaning. Productivity
use cases were often related to office work: “The Slack app, that one is meaningful because that one
actually gives us support… it’s meaningful in that way because it helps me get work done easier” (P10). For
P10, the two weeks of participation helped him realize how he used his phone more productively than he
had thought: “I always knew that my phone is probably more important than my wallet at this point in my
life, but I didn't realize how often I used it productively versus just screwing around” (P10).

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Because our definition of productivity was broad (“Getting things done or self-improvement”),
participants also reported productivity uses beyond the workplace:
A fitness app, that would be something productive, or something that had to do with organization,
like creating a to-do list, or, you know, keeping up with plans at work and writing down notes and
projects. I'd say that feels a lot more meaningful to me than just maybe going into an app and
scrolling through cute cat pictures. (P7)
It was common for participants to contrast productivity against other use cases such as social media: “I
have a Fitbit and then a calorie counter thing. Using both together I think is more meaningful and worth my
while than just looking at Facebook” (P6). Asking participants what they found meaningful helped reveal
what they found meaningless.
Active communication was also frequently regarded as meaningful regardless of which app store
category it fell under:
Probably the most meaningful task that I used my phone for was communicating or interacting
with other people. And that was irrespective of what kind of app I used, so if it was like Messenger
or Facebook or Snapchat, it didn’t matter what app I was using, or email. If I was using it to interact
with someone, I think I associated that usage of the phone more positively. (P3)
Of the apps mentioned in this quote, only Messenger is listed in the “Communication” category on Play
Store, whereas email apps are usually in either “Communication” or “Productivity,” and Facebook and
Snapchat are in “Social.” Other participants reported meaningful communication in apps that fall under
categories such as “Tools” (e.g., the dialer), “Music and Audio” (e.g., Spotify), and “Lifestyle” (e.g., Tinder).
Meaningful communication was not bounded by app store categories.
Participants saw interactions with close ties as especially meaningful:
I didn’t speak to my daughter for at least four or five days. I got my own apartment, I just moved
into this apartment where I’m at now, and she’s mad because I left. Then yesterday she finally
talked to me on Facebook, so that’s why I put a 6 [out of 7 for meaningfulness]. (P10)
When we asked participants what type of use they considered meaningful, it sometimes took them a few
moments to respond. Communication with family was often the answer these participants gave upon
reflection:
Meaningful... I mean other than maybe just calls with family or texting throughout the day, but yeah
I would say just generally... Yeah I'd say calls are probably the only really very meaningful thing
that I'd be doing, maybe emails with family news or updates like that. (P11)
We did not distinguish between communication with close and weak ties in our U&G types, but it appears
to relate to the meaningfulness of smartphone use.
Meaningless Experiences with Smartphones
Almost all participants singled out passive social media use when asked if they found any smartphone
use meaningless:
Oh yeah. Browsing social media. Going to Facebook just to browse and not doing anything else.
Going to Instagram just to browse. I think those are pretty much meaningless. (P3)
As in this quote, qualifier words like “just” and “kind of” were used almost every time that participants
described their social media use, in a way that downplayed the significance of their activity. This
contrasted with the more direct language used to describe more meaningful uses that was free of such
qualifiers.

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Several participants suggested that social media could be more meaningful if they engaged more
actively:
Social media has the potential to be meaningful, but the way that I often use it is meaningless, as a
way to just pass the time. I am not very active on social media, engaging with it. I am just a consumer
which feels less useful to me… not building meaningful connections. (P1)
P6 was similarly critical of the passive nature of his social media use, using words like “not do anything”
and “sitting there”:
I would just scroll through Facebook and not do anything. I was just kind of wasting time, sitting
there, looking at pictures and videos. Looking back on it, no, that really wasn’t meaningful
whatsoever... Maybe if I was actually going to be using Facebook or texting more or Snapchatting
more, it would be actually to interact with someone and speak with someone, so I have better
relationships with people, instead of just looking at pictures and not doing anything, interaction-
wise. (P6)
Similarly, in P7’s mind, what she called her “lurking” did not build relationships in the same way as “actual
interaction” (active communication in our types of use). P3 also regarded his present social media use as
mostly meaningless, but believed that it had potential to be more active and meaningful.
Entertainment was also sometimes cited as meaningless. “I wouldn't say any time spent on that app [the
Deep Town game] was meaningful, it's just a way to entertain myself mindlessly” (P11). Another participant
explained why he considered entertainment uses to be meaningless: “I just tended to gain more out of
using it as a tool rather than using it to pass the time or using it to do something that didn't have like an end
gain” (P3). As in this quote, participants often attributed meaningfulness to a lack of ‘productive’ output.
4.1.2 Experience Sampling Data
Next we investigated whether type of use affects meaningfulness in the experience sampling data. In
addition, based on prior literature, we examined how U&G motivation (instrumental versus habitual)
relates to meaningfulness.
Fig. 2 reveals a clear relationship between meaningfulness and type of use. Productivity, information,
and communication show higher ratings of meaningfulness than entertainment and social media. These
results are consistent with the interview data. Fig. 3 shows that meaningfulness is also strongly related to
U&G motivation. Habitual use is associated with less meaningful experience.

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Fig. 2. Meaningfulness vs. U&G type. Shows the mean and its 95% CI.
Entertainment and social media are related to a lower sense of meaningfulness .

Fig. 3. Meaningfulness vs. U&G motivation. Shows the mean and its 95% CI.
Habitual motivation is related to a lower sense of meaningfulness .

We performed a linear mixed effects analysis of the relationship between meaningfulness and our
explanatory variables (Table 5). As fixed effects, we entered U&G type, U&G motivation, and time of day.
Time of day was included because prior work suggests that people use their phone less purposefully later
in the day [25]. As a random effect, we included participant ID, so that intercept was allowed to vary by
participant. We used R and the lmerTest package [38] to run models with the REML estimation and test
for significance.
Relative to smartphone use for productivity, social media use decreased ratings of meaningfulness by
about 0.67 ± .12 (standard errors), holding other factors constant. Entertainment use led to a roughly
similar decline (0.56 ± .11) on the 7-point scale for meaningfulness, whereas information and
communication were not significantly different from productivity use. Using one’s phone habitually rather

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22:14 • K. Lukoff et al.

than instrumentally reduced meaningfulness scores by about 0.68 ± .07. Coefficients for time of day were
mostly in the expected direction (with evening and night corresponding with less meaningful use), but
effect sizes were small and insignificant.

Table 5: Mixed Effects Regression for Meaningfulness (n=1947)

Source Estimate SE t P
Intercept 3.74 0.13 35.28 <.001
U&G Type (baseline = Productivity)
Information -.13 .10 -1.32 <.188
Communication -.09 .09 -.95 <.345
Entertainment -.56 .11 -5.06 <.001
Social media -.67 .12 -5.72 <.001
U&G Motivation (baseline = Instrumental)
Habitual -.68 .07 -9.47 <.001
Time of day (baseline = Morning (6am-12pm))
Afternoon (12-6pm) .08 .07 1.23 .218
Evening (6pm-12am) -.06 .07 -.91 .365
Night (12-6am) -.17 .11 -1.55 .121

4.1.3 Exit Survey

In the exit survey, participants rated how often that they wanted to use their phone for different U&G
types on a 5-point scale, ranging from far less often to far more often (Fig. 4). An analysis of variance
(ANOVA) on these scores yielded significant variation among conditions (F(4, 225) = 26.41, p < 0.001).
The results of a post hoc Tukey test are also shown in Fig. 4.

Fig. 4. Desired frequency of use vs. U&G type (1 = far less often, 5 = far more often). Shows the mean and its 95% CI.
Letters (a, b, c, d) indicate pairs that are not significantly different from each other. For example, Productivity and Information are
both marked (a), so do not differ significantly. However, Productivity does differ significantly from all other U&G types (p < 0.01).

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Ratings were mostly consistent with the ESM data, with productivity receiving the highest average
score and social media the lowest. One exception is that communication lay in the middle, with no
significant difference relative to entertainment (p = 0.07) and informational use (p = 0.32). Prior
literature and our interview data suggest that communication with close ties would have been rated
higher than interaction with weak ties, but our definition of communication as a type of use did not make
this distinction. On the whole, participants wanted to reduce usage behavior that was also associated with
a lack of meaningfulness in the ESM data.

4.2 Loss of Autonomy

In interviews, participants reported a loss of autonomy during smartphone use. They highlighted the
automatic nature of their checking habits, particularly for social media, entertainment, and sometimes
communication. This kind of habitual smartphone use was frequently characterized as meaningless.
Experience sampling data reveal social media and entertainment are used habitually far more often
than other types of use. These data also show that participants began smartphone use with a higher sense
of instrumental motivation than they ended with. In other words, intention is eroded during the course of
smartphone use.
4.2.1 Interview Data
A recurrent theme was loss of autonomy, acting without the experience of choice [17]. Many
participants felt like they were not in control of their use: “A lot of the times I'd be on my browser and
maybe I can get sucked into some mindless BuzzFeed article. I feel like it's kind of more of a black hole
than if you go on a fitness app that's strictly for one thing” (P7). Another participant wished that he had
more self-control, particularly when his wife was annoyed with him for being on his phone all the time.
However, when asked why he thought he lacked this self-control, he clarified that it felt like his use was
no longer an active choice:
I'd say it's more just a condition thing at this point. It's so normalized to have the phone in my
pocket or on the table or whatever and just be absentmindedly glancing at it or picking up and
scrolling through something. That probably isn't meaningful at all, just kind of a force of habit.
(P11)
Lack of control was rarely attributed to active failure to resist in-the-moment, but rather to unconscious
habit. We therefore use loss of autonomy rather than loss of self-control to describe this feeling of acting
without the experience of choice.
Participants shared many anecdotes in which they were not even aware of their own use at the
moment: “Without even realizing it, I pulled out my phone and just started mindlessly checking my email.
Then when I put it away I realized, ‘Oh, I feel bad for ignoring my friends’” (P1). The presence or
intervention of close ties often helped a participant become aware of use that their reflective self also
considered problematic. One participant told her fiancé that she was not going to check Facebook on her
phone while they were watching television together on the couch:
I would not look at my phone for about 10 minutes, and then I wouldn’t even realize it, but I had it
back in my hand and I was looking at it, and then [my fiancé] would bring up, ‘You’re using your
phone again. You said you weren’t going to use your phone when we were watching this episode.’
I'm like, ‘Oh, yeah, right. I forgot,’ then put my phone back down. It's gotten better maybe, but it's
something that's just a habit. It's really hard to break habits. (P6)
Smartphone use was viewed as a strong habit and sometimes as an ‘addiction’. One participant explained
why he wanted to use his phone less often after participating in the study:

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Because I kind of realized how glued I was. It's almost second instinct, you know? The minute you
are bored or don't have anything to do, you just turn to your phone, and I'd like to be able to get
out more and really live life. (P7)
Despite their best intentions, participants reported that because phone use habits had become so
ingrained, they were now “really hard” to change.
Lack of autonomy went hand-in-hand with a lack of meaning for participants. Again, P6 shared:
“Sometimes, I'll look at the videos, yeah, and they make me sad, so why would I even, why do I keep looking at
it? I don't know why I do, but I do.” One participant summed up this relationship, “Candy Crush is absolutely
addictive, and it's just absolutely useless” (P5). Other participants described cases of unconscious use as
“completely pointless” and “a waste of time.”
4.2.2 Experience Sampling Data
To check whether participants were “sucked into” meaningless use, we tested the relationship between
U&G motivation and the timing of the sample (Fig. 5). A chi-square test of independence revealed that the
relation between these variables was significant, 𝑋 2 (2, 7557) = 109.74, p <.001. The percentage share of
instrumental motivation declined from the start timing (65.6%) to the during timing (51.4%). There was
a slight increase in instrumental use from the during timing to the end timing (55.7%), which may be
because participants may have looked back upon an app use that started with instrumental motivation
and later changed to habitual motivation and concluded that, on the whole, it was still more instrumental.
At the start of app use, participants had a specific purpose in mind more often than during or at the end of
use.

Fig. 5. U&G motivation vs. timing. Instrumental motivation declines over the course of use, relative to habitual use.

We also examined whether the erosion of instrumental motivation differed between types of use. Fig. 6
shows the percent of instrumental use and the sample of the timing, for each type of use. First, we note
that different types of use had different baselines. Regardless of timing, productivity, information, and
communication use was far more likely to be instrumentally motivated than was entertainment and social
media.

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Fig. 6. Instrumental motivation vs. timing, by type of use. Compared to other types of use, entertainment and social media are less
likely to be instrumentally motivated to begin with and also show greater decline over the course of use.

In addition, change over time was different for the types of use. The absolute change in instrumental
motivation from the start to the end timing was: 0.0% for productivity, -4.0% for information, -6.0% for
communication, -7.9% for entertainment, and -9.8% for social media. For each of the five types of use, we
ran a logistic regression analysis with U&G motivation of use as the response variable and timing as the
explanatory variable. The decrease from the start to end of use was significant (p<.001) for
communication, entertainment, and social media, but not for productivity and information. This suggests
that when phone use was instrumentally motivated, type of use influenced how likely participants were to
switch to a habitual intention.
Our results also suggest two pathways between the U&G motivations and types associated with a loss
of autonomy. In interviews, participants reported mindlessly checking their phone “without even realizing
it.” This forms a habitual checking pathway in which habitual motivation leads to entertainment and social
media use. The erosion of motivation pathway reinforces the same relationship in the other direction. For
the entertainment and social media U&G types, participants were most likely to shift towards habitual
motivations later in the course of app use.

4.3 Micro Escapes

Participants reported that their phone served as a temporary relief from negative states, which we call
a micro escape. In this case, participants were not concerned with the meaningfulness of smartphone use,
but rather whether or not it helped them cope with undesirable real-life emotions and situations.
Participants held different opinions as to whether micro escapes were helpful.
4.3.1 Interview Data
Escaping from Negative States
Participants described turning to their phone during a wide variety of challenging states, both internal
(e.g., boredom) and external (e.g., a dispute at work). For instance, a participant who works in customer
service shared, “I find my phone to be a way for me to get away and distract myself, instead of sitting there

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stressed out because I just argued with a customer” (P10). Instead of enduring such undesirable states,
smartphones provided participants with an instant way to escape from almost any situation.
Participants turned to their smartphone for relief when they experienced low emotional valence: “I
mostly scroll through social media just to get through the day, like I'm bored so I scroll social media.
Otherwise, I don't think I scroll social media when I'm happy” (P3). Low valence states that participants said
prompted micro escapes included stress, frustration, annoyance, and being upset. One notable exception
to this theme was P8, who saw no relationship between his affective state and how he used his phone: “My
emotions have absolutely nothing to do with my phone unless I have to make a call that’s of importance.” On
the whole, however, participants believed that micro escapes were more common when they were in a
negative mood.
The relationship between smartphone escapism and arousal (energy level) was ambiguous. On the one
hand, participants reported using their phone to escape when they were upset, annoyed, and
overwhelmed, states that are associated with high arousal [70]. On the other hand, participants shared
that they often used their phone in this way when they were bored, fatigued, and tired, states linked to
low arousal [70]. Four participants observed that micro escapes grew more common as they got tired at
night.
Participants characterized smartphone use that was prompted by low valence or low arousal as lacking
in meaning and purpose:
When my mood or when my energy was lower, I tended to reach for my phone to perform tasks
that were very nonspecific or did not have any sort of value associated with them. I would either
get on Facebook and scroll through my feed or go to YouTube or any activity that had no purpose
associated with it other than to pass the time or to distract me from whatever was going on at the
moment. (P3)
Passive consumption was the main pattern of use at these times, as indicated by verbs such as “scrolling,”
“browsing,” “watching,” and “checking to pass the time.” Social media and entertainment were the types of
use that participants most often described as micro escapes. To escape, participants turned to passive
consumption that in-of-itself they reported was not very meaningful.
Do People Find Micro Escapes Helpful?
Participants held mixed opinions about whether smartphone micro escapes were a helpful response to
their negative states. Some participants felt that pulling out their phone helped them cope with certain
states (particularly negative emotions with high arousal), whereas others wished they did not do so as
often (especially when it replaced a work-related task). Our interview data cover only subjective
experience of an individual: what participants themselves viewed as useful (or not). However, we note
that objective outcomes (e.g., productivity) and the experience of third parties (i.e., other people affected
by an individual’s smartphone use) are also important to study.
Micro Escapes for Emotional Self-Regulation
P5 described the phone as a “great distraction tool” that reduced his anxiety: “It takes my mind off of it
so that I'm not worried about it, or bothered by it.” Four others also found the phone to be an effective tool
for emotional self-regulation. P10, who works in customer service, said, “I tried to help them out and they
cursed me out. I'll turn to my phone in order to just pretty much keep me calm and keep me sane pretty
much.” In cases where participants found micro escapes to be helpful, the emotions they addressed
tended to be low in valence, but high in arousal (e.g., upset, stress, frustration, annoyance, and anxiety
[70]). Five of participants reported that smartphone use helped them to cool down these ‘hot’ emotions.
Other participants felt that smartphone micro escapes were not beneficial, particularly when used to
escape low valence and low arousal states (e.g., boredom and fatigue). P6 wished that she did not use her
phone when she was bored at night, comparing it against other activities she considered more productive:

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I definitely noticed that, as the night goes on and as it gets later, I’d look at Facebook more and
more. I think it’s just because I’m getting tired and bored, and it’s just a way to pass the time, when,
in reality, I could be actually doing stuff at my house and talking to someone in person and getting
things done… I feel like it’s a waste of time. (P6)
Like P6, P3 also turned to her phone for escape when she was bored or mentally taxed:
Why do I go on Facebook when I’m bored or I can’t write what I want? I don’t know… it would have
been to just disengage my brain from my task and then I think the ideal is to go back to it with a
fresh mind. But I don’t think going on Facebook actually accomplishes that. (P3)
P3 was at a loss to explain why she used her phone to escape when she knew it to be ineffective: “The
thing is like I never feel any better, but I still do it. It’s such a weird realization. Yeah, the phone usage does
not help the situation whatsoever, yet I still do it.” This habitual nature of use contrasted against the
aforementioned cases where participants described more consciously choosing to use their phone to
relieve negative emotions.
Micro Escapes in Social Situations
Four participants valued how smartphones helped them escape from social situations. For P2, who
described herself as a “sociable introvert” who sometimes needs “a little escape from the humans,” her
smartphone provided her with the means to do so: “It's not okay in our society to be like, ‘You guys are
exhausting. I'm just gonna stand over here for five minutes and take a deep breath, and then I'm gonna come
back to the party or the picnic or whatever.’” P3 similarly liked using his phone to escape from socializing
with relatives. Both participants appreciated that they could use their smartphone to escape while in
social settings, a form of use they viewed as socially acceptable.
P9 described how his phone helped him to cope with the stress of family life without having to leave
the kitchen: “You can't step outside for a minute each time it gets hectic, because it's always hectic with
three children. Again, I end up using [apps and games] to uplift myself and relax.” For P9, a micro escape
was a helpful emotional self-regulation strategy relative to physically removing himself from the setting.
We cannot say whether other family members share this opinion.

5 DISCUSSION
Our results reveal systematic ways in which habitual use, type of use, and feelings of meaning all move
together. We sought to better understand, first, which uses and gratifications are associated with
meaningless experiences, and, second, how these uses and gratifications change as the user engages with
an app. Our results show that both the motivation of use (i.e., whether a user picks up the device with
intention or out of habit), and the type of use they engage in (as defined by our U&G taxonomy) each
independently predict the meaning the user will derive from the experience. Our results also show that
habitual use leaves users feeling a lack of control over their own behavior and that these are patterns of
engagement that users would like to change.

5.1 Characterizing Meaningless Experiences

Reflecting on their phone use generally, participants repeatedly told us they derive relatively little
meaning from passively consuming social media and entertainment content. However, they also
explained that this was a function of the type of use they engaged in rather than the content itself. Though
participants consistently cited Facebook as a source of feelings of meaninglessness, these reports
reflected their attitude toward passively scrolling through content, not their attitude toward engaging
with their friends through the platform. This suggests that with respect to the meaning users derive from
their phone use, the type of use an individual engages in may be a more useful unit of analysis than app
name or app category. Though it can also be valuable to ask questions of particular apps, our results show

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22:20 • K. Lukoff et al.

the value of U&G in this space and that an app-level analysis might miss distinctions specific to the type of
use. For example, while some prior work reports that Facebook use predicts declines in subjective well-
being [37], other work finds that Facebook use increases social capital and feelings of connectedness [19].
Our results suggest that these seemingly contradictory perspectives may both capture users’ experiences
accurately and that their differing conclusions may arise from distinctions in the type of use and the
gratifications users are seeking.
In addition to the type of use participants engaged in, the motivation behind app use also predicted
meaningfulness. Passively browsing social media or consuming entertainment was more meaningful
when it was a conscious choice on the part of the user and less meaningful when it was an instinctive
reflex. Prior work has shown that “Short-duration, Isolated, Reward-Based” (SIRB) phone use (such as
passive social media consumption) is associated with habit-driven phone use, and that these experiences
erode the user’s intentions [56]. Here, we show that using the phone to engage with SIRB activities and
habitually motivated use are each independently associated with less meaningful experiences. Each of
these factors independently contributes to a loss of meaning, over and above the contributions of the
other.
This is important from a design perspective, because participants reported that they are dissatisfied
with their engagement in meaningless activities. In theory, there might be no need for designers to
promote experiences that users find meaningful: if users felt good about engaging in habitual phone use
and the SIRB activities they characterize as meaningless, one might argue that these are scenarios to
support. But consistent with the construct of lagging resistance [5] and other prior work on SIRB
experiences [24,74], many of the participants in our study reported they would like to change this usage.
Prior work on SIRB activities shows that these experiences lead to checking habits and increased phone
use [56]. Here, we further show that these patterns of use predict meaningless experiences that
participants wish to reduce.

5.2 Lack of Autonomy and Meaning

The relationship between habitual use and a lack of meaning persisted across all types of use, even
types of use that participants usually found meaningful, like getting things done or connecting with
others. Participants shared that they would frequently use their phones without realizing what they were
doing and that these experiences lacked meaning. This is consistent with the underlying principles of
U&G, which conceives of users as active agents seeking specific gratifications through specific uses [69].
Our results suggest that experiences that erode intention and promote habitual use disrupt this core
pathway to a user valuing a medium.
These findings imply that even persuasive interfaces designed to draw users into meaningful activities
may promote dissatisfaction by pushing users to engage mindlessly. Designers of persuasive interfaces
that intend to promote meaningful activities should also consider when and why users might want to
engage in this activity of their own volition. A game that encourages a user to solve math problems, care
about environmental sustainability, or remember to vote might promote an activity that she finds
meaningful, yet could still leave her feeling a lack of autonomy if the interface promotes habitual phone
use, checking habits, and erosion of intentions. A value-sensitive design approach [20] could help
designers identify not only what habits users want to form, but also the context-specific ways in which
they wish to enact them and the social norms that may help or hinder [44].

5.3 Micro Escapes

Some participants explained that they were not always seeking meaning from their phone use; they
described sometimes seeking the gratification of escaping from their surroundings and the present
moment, not a gratification that comes from phone content directly. This is consistent with prior work in
U&G showing escapism as a common motivation for media use [28,66]. Notably, participants pointed out

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 What Makes Smartphone Use Meaningful or Meaningless? • 22:21

that these escapes offered them lasting value in times of stress or anger. In these cases, users said that the
distraction of the phone allowed them escape from high-arousal feelings, which dissipated as they
engaged in phone activities. It was less clear that micro escapes to avoid boredom or tiredness offered the
same lasting value. This provides some suggestion that users may benefit from micro escapes to avoid
high-arousal situations but not low-arousal ones. But given that we only encountered this theme through
retrospective interviews, the extent to which we can make this claim is limited.
We believe that it would be valuable for future work to examine the lasting impact of micro escapes in
both high-arousal and low-arousal contexts. Does turning to Candy Crush in a moment of outrage make it
less likely that an individual will fire off an angry email? And does turning to Candy Crush at the end of an
exhausting day offer rejuvenation? Participants’ reflections suggest that micro escapes can help with the
first scenario but offer less assistance in the second. Future work to understand the consequences of
escaping in these various scenarios has the potential to offer concrete guidance to users about how they
might expect their phone activity to influence their well-being. For developers, it suggests that a general
population could benefit from smartphone experiences that detect high-arousal states and assist with
emotional self-regulation, as has previously been done with clinical populations [58].

5.4 Why Design for Meaningfulness?

From a pessimistic economic perspective, monetization in the form of advertising provides developers
with strong motivation to optimize for engagement rather than a user’s sense of meaningfulness. Indeed,
the thriving casino industry exploits behavioral science to design gambling machines that draw people
into trancelike states and relieve them from everyday concerns [75]. Tristan Harris, co-founder of the
advocacy group Time Well Spent, argues that in the attention economy, “there’s a thousand people on the
other side of the screen whose job is to break down whatever responsibility I can maintain” [10]. When
incentives lead developers to design apps for meaningless engagement, it is up to either individual users
or society to push back.
A more hopeful economic perspective is that designing for meaningfulness will increase user loyalty in
the long term, even if it decreases engagement in the short term. For example, in January 2018, CEO Mark
Zuckerberg announced that the social network’s news feed would prioritize “meaningful interactions”
over passive experiences [84]. He shared that he believes this will hurt his firm’s engagement measures in
the short run, but make the service more valuable to users in the long run. In modest support of this view,
our study finds that types of use that people find meaningless are also those they wish to use less
frequently, although we cannot say how often they actually follow through on that desire. It is worth
noting that actors with longer investment time horizons, such as platform owners and apps with low
customer churn, are in better position to benefit from long-term user engagement.

5.5 Design Implications

In the technology industry, it’s often said that “you build what you measure” [2]. Measuring a user’s
sense of meaningfulness is undoubtedly harder than tracking their views, taps, or time spent in an app,
but can still be done. The overall agreement of the quantitative and qualitative findings in this study
suggest that asking for numerical ratings during app use is a valid approach to measuring meaningfulness.
However, the interview finding that apps are used as micro escapes from stressful situations shows that
qualitative investigation is still critical to understanding the meaningfulness of app use in a broader
context. In Facebook’s case, the firm setup an offline panel to solicit qualitative input from users and
discovered, for instance, that tragic posts were low in engagement metrics but “really mattered” to people
[55]. Developers should consider both quantitative and qualitative data when designing for
meaningfulness.
Mobile app designers who want to build meaningful experiences should consider how to respect a
user’s autonomy. To do so, designers should examine how an app supports or distracts a user from their

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22:22 • K. Lukoff et al.

purpose for visiting. Prior work in ubiquitous computing has shown that it is possible to detect or predict
when a user is likely to be using the phone mindlessly or problematically [25,77], suggesting that it may
be possible for an app to detect when it is and is not being used with intention. If intention is clear, an app
could dynamically change its interface to foreground that use case and background others. If a single
pattern of use is especially common, a developer may even consider “unbundling" it. For instance,
Facebook split off its instant messaging features into a separate Messenger app. If intention is unclear, an
app could provide the user with a pause to reflect, rather than defaulting to its most engaging content. For
example, when a user opens a new browser window, one could present top news stories or most
frequently visited sites, but The Momentum browser extension [87] asks, “What is your main focus for
today?”
Apps can also encourage users to move on when their original purpose is achieved. For example, when
a user reaches a clean email inbox in Gmail, it shows a blank screen with the message “You’re all done!
Please enjoy your day." By contrast, when a user finishes watching a video on YouTube or Netflix, they
start auto-playing the next video by default. Designing for a positive disengagement experience could
heighten a user’s autonomy and sense of meaning.
Lastly, smartphone users themselves can also take steps to retain control over their experience. Before
picking up their phone, they could form a clear intention for use. Mindfulness-based approaches may aid
users to observe and establish psychological distance from the internal triggers that prompt habitual use
[41]. Users can also architect the environment on their device to encourage single purpose use, for
instance by removing app icons from their home screen and instead accessing them via search [10,45].
Hiding cues that trigger habitual use could help people keep control and use their smartphone in more
meaningful ways [45].

5.6 Limitations and Future Work

Though we collected ESM and log data from participants, our investigation was exploratory. We used
themes from interviews and open-ended ESM responses rather than preconceived hypotheses to guide
our analysis. Our claims should be interpreted as qualitative findings rather than hypothesis-
confirmation; it would be valuable for future work to evaluate these relationships experimentally. We
sampled participants from one cultural context and our sample was over-representative of younger
adults, so our results may not generalize to other populations. In future work, analyzing individual app
use as part of a larger sequence of use (e.g., use that follows an incoming message/notification) could also
yield further insights.
Our findings suggest specific links between motivation of use, type of use, and meaning, and they
suggest two pathways—specifically, checking habits and an erosion of purpose—that lead to a loss of
autonomy. A future, large-scale quantitative investigation would help confirm or refute the existence of
these links and help to develop these themes into formal theory if applicable. Future work also remains to
examine these relationships in the larger social context in which phone use occurs; here we examined
only how specific motivations and types of use affect the individual.
U&G is one of many lenses that can be used to understand people’s experiences with their
smartphones. It has been critiqued for its reliance on self-report [76], its emphasis on the individual
without consideration of the collective [80], and its assumption—in contrast to a media effects
perspective—that users have full agency when they choose to engage with technology [18]. Despite its
shortcomings, U&G has proven over many decades to be one productive way of understanding how
individuals’ engage with media and technology [69]. Similarly, although we chose to focus on
meaningfulness, concepts such as self-actualization [48] and meaning-making [36] also shed light on
eudaimonic well-being. Using other frameworks to examine how people derive meaning from their
smartphone use would provide a valuable complement to the data we present here.

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 What Makes Smartphone Use Meaningful or Meaningless? • 22:23

6 CONCLUSION
In this study, we used a U&G perspective to examine how motivation (i.e., a specific intention or a general
habit) and type of use (e.g., information-seeking or communication) affect the meaning that a user derives
from phone use. We developed a typology of 5 different smartphone uses and gratifications and found that
users routinely used the same app for different purposes. Passively browsing social media and consuming
entertainment felt less meaningful to participants than other types of use. Using one’s phone out of habit—
for any type of use—also reduced meaning. Participants explained that they wanted to cut back on this
habitual use, which they associated with a lack of autonomy. Separately, some participants said that they
do not always seek meaning from their phone; sometimes they seek escape, which can offer lasting value
by distracting or calming them during high-arousal emotions (e.g., anger). Designers who seek to promote
experiences that users find meaningful can consider the types of use they promote, the extent to which they
erode users’ intentions, and how their designs are likely to promote or inhibit autonomy.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Funding for this study was provided by the Intel Science & Technology Center on Pervasive Computing and
NSF grant #IIS-1553167. We thank Gary Hsieh, Tadayoshi Kohno, and Sean Munson for their assistance
with the study design; Philippe Verduyn for sharing his study protocol; David Ribes, Daniela Rosner, Sean
Munson, and Ulrik Lyngs for their feedback on draft versions; Xiaoyi Zhang for support in the development
of our Android app; IMWUT reviewers for their thoughtful feedback; and all of the study participants for
their responses.

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Received November 2017; revised January 2018; accepted January 2018.

Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies, Vol. 2, No. 1, Article 22. Publication date: March 2018.