“Get off your phone!” A Cognitive Dissonance Approach to Reduce Student’s Social Media Behavior

Abstract

Within recent years, there has been a fast increase in social media use among young adults and many studies have found that this increase may have negative consequences. The present paper investigates the harmful effects of social media behavior and reviews studies that have already attempted to reduce this behavior. Additionally, the paper reviews preexisting literature on cognitive dissonance and looks at areas where using a cognitive dissonance paradigm has been proven effective in making individuals adopt proattitudinal behaviors. Lastly, adding to the already existing cognitive dissonance research we conducted a study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of this paradigm to reduce social media behavior among college students. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions and completed preand post-intervention questionnaires to assess their social media usage and attitudes toward social media. By measuring participants’ screen time statistics the results showed that the interventions did not lead to statistically significant changes in social media usage among students over a two-week period while identifying the potential confounding variables for the lack of effectiveness. The study did however reveal the prevalence of concerns among college students regarding their social media usage and emphasizes the importance of developing effective interventions to address this growing issue.