Somebody called the social media apps: the weapons of mass distraction.
Papers
- Aiki: Turning Procrastination into Microlearning
- A study with Nanna Inie
- Shows that people who want to learn Danish can use redirection from time-wasting-websites as a strategy and cue to remember that they should learn
- Our participants learned quite a bit of Danish and some of them actually found the learning a better use of their time than the ‘mindless’ scrolling on Facebook
Further Directions
- Generalizing Aiki so it allows redirection to any activity not only Danish learning; studying whether the choice of activity results in participants being more engaged
- Creating an integrated Aiki that intercepts also the time-wasting attempts on the phone; some of the participants int he first Aiki study observed that some of their interruptions are on the phone not in the browser