Can reflecting on smartphone screen time legitimacy increase college students’ study effort: a field experiment

Chen Fan, Bin Wang, Xuefang Xie, Jun Yang, Yue Zhang and Jing Qian

Behaviour and Information Technology, 2026, vol. 45, issue 4, 680-693

Abstract: Based on the introjected regulation perspective, this study developed a reflection intervention on smartphone screen time legitimacy, prompting college students to critically evaluate the legitimacy of their daily screen time on smartphones. We propose that this self-reflection intervention can influence students’ study efforts by increased shame and introjected study motivation. We examined our hypotheses using an experience sampling study of 118 college students across 14 consecutive days. In the daily morning survey, we randomly assigned participants to one of two conditions: reflecting on the legitimacy of their previous day’s smartphone screen time (i.e. experimental group) or recalling the most memorable events of the previous day (i.e. control group). Results from our multilevel analyses revealed that reflection intervention on smartphone screen time legitimacy (compared with the control group) can lead to greater shame, which in turn, enhanced introjected study motivation and daily study effort. Additionally, we found that general self-efficacy had a cross-level moderating effect on the within-individual relationship between reflection intervention and shame such that, the effect of reflection intervention on shame was more pronounced for students with higher levels of general self-efficacy.

Date: 2026
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DOI: 10.1080/0144929X.2025.2528759

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