The Impact Of Mobile Phone Use On Adolescent Self-Control

Mobile Internet created new forms of social life, imperceptibly changing people’s lifestyle. Mobile phone, as the most important medium of mobile Internet, plays an increasingly important role in adolescent life. Adolescents are the main force of mobile phone use, and are also particularly vulnerable to the bad effects of mobile phone use. Mobile phone brings convenience to adolescent, but there are also some negative effects. Mobility, immediacy, fragmentation, as the unique characteristics of mobile phone use, are in accordance with adolescent three main development changes, namely increased risk taking, increased sensation seeking, and a move away from parent toward greater peer affiliation. This coupling highlights a key issue, whether the use of mobile phone influence adolescent self-control?Self-control is the ability to overcome impulsiveness, to resist the temptation, and consciously monitor and manage own behavior, to make the behavior more in line with social expectations or personal long-term goals. Self-control plays a very important role to understanding "self, the core concept of adolescent development, and is an important predictor of adolescent emotion and social adaptation. According to the strength model of self-control, self-control will consume individuals’ limited mental resources, when mental resources were consumed to a certain extent, it will lead to self-control failure. In the mobile Internet era, mobile phone can intervene people’daily life at any time and any where, to attract or interfere individuals’attention. Mobile phone provides young people plenty of temptations and choices, which would consume mental resources, so that adolescent self-control becomes more difficult.Construal level theory (CLT) posits that the same event or object can be represented at multiple levels. High-level construals entail constructing abstract conceptualizations of information about objects and events. High level construals, capture the superordinate, central features of an object or event. Low-level construals, alternatively, consist of subordinate, incidental features. High levels construal, since it is possible to seize the essence of the things, for the sake of the overall situation and long-term, more beyond the self, which is conducive to individuals’self-control. Low levels of construal, since too concerned about the details, for the sake of short-term and immediate interests, more easy to indulge in self, which easily lead to self-control failure. At the same time, the construal levels are closely related psychological distance (time, space, social distance, and hypotheticality). As psychological distance increases, construals would become more abstract and higher. As psychological distance decreases, the construals would become more specific and lower.Mobile phone use, on the one hand, because of its Internet features, reduces the time and space distance, so that may reduce construal level. On the other hand, according to the embodied cognition theory, body posture and movement experience will affect cognitive processing. Phubbing would lead to cognitive process with limited vision, decrease psychological distance and construal level. Mobile phone use may affect adolescent self-control by reducing construal level.In addition, the present study introduced the "emotional-instrumental" Internet use classification framework into mobile phones use. Emotional mobile phone use refers to the mobile phone use process with strong emotional involvement, and a higher level of self-wake-up (such as scanning their own updates). Instrumental mobile phone mainly refers to the individual just take mobile phone as an information acquisition and learning tools, with fewer emotional involvement and self-wake-up (such as browsing news). The reason why mobile phone use have negative effects may be closely related to the "low instrumental but high emotional" mobile phone use, which was just a typical pattern of adolescent mobile phone use. In terms of the effect on self-control, emotion is one of the most important factors leading to self-control failure. According to cognitive-affective personality system model, cognitive is corresponds to the "cold" system, emotion is corresponding to the "hot" system, a balance between the "cold" system and "hot" system is the key to self-control success. Instrumental mobile phone use (more cognitive) and emotional mobile phone use (more emotion), are corresponding to "cold" system and "hot" system, respectively. Emotional mobile phone use may have a greater impact on self-control.Previous researches have concentrated on the effects of mobile phone use on adolescent emotion and social adaptation, little is known about the influence of mobile phones use on self-control. In this study, by questionnaire and behavioral experiments, we examined the effect of mobile phone use on self-control, and explored whether this association mediated by construal level.In study 1, a total of 1,179 middle school students and 1,322 college students as subjects, completed anonymous questionnaires regarding mobile phone use, behavioral identification form (construal level measurement), dual system of self-control scale. It was found that mobile phone use negatively correlated with construal level and self-control, construal level was positively correlated with self-control. The negative association between mobile phone use and self-control was mediated by construal level. Moreover, the mediating effect was stronger for college students than that for middle school students.In study 2, three single-factor between-subjects research design compared the effects of mobile phone use on self-control. Experiments 1, hand grip task was used as a measure of self-control,56 college students were randomly assigned to mobile phone use and non-mobile use group. The results found that the participants assigned to mobile phone use group held a hand grip closed longer than those who assigned to non-mobile phone use group. Experiment 2, with computerized mirror-tracing persistence task and temptations evaluation task as the measure of self-control, providing a behavioral replication of the results of experiment 1. The results revealed that participants assigned to mobile phone use group displayed less persistence time in computerized mirror-tracing persistence task and higher score in temptations evaluation task than those assigned to non-mobile phone use group. Experiment 3, with delay-discounting task as the measure of self-control,155 college students were randomly assigned to self-interaction group, game group, social-interaction group, and browse news group. The results showed that participants assigned to self-interaction group displayed a reduced tendency to prefer delayed outcomes over immediate compared with those who assigned to browse news group, supporting the hypothesis that emotional mobile phone use lead to lower self-control than instrumental mobile phone use.Study 3 examined the potential role of construal level in the association between mobile phone use and self-control with 2 behavioral experiments. Experiments 4, construal level as the dependent variable,52 college students were randomly assigned to mobile phone use and non-mobile use group. The results found that the participants assigned to mobile phone use group scored lower in construal level than those who assigned to non-mobile phone use group, indicating that mobile phone use reduced the individual’s construal level. Experiments 5, we employed a 2 (mobile phone use vs. non-mobile phone use) x2 (high construal level vs. low construal level) between-subjects design to evaluate the hypothesized interaction between mobile phone use and construal level.157 participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions (mobile phone use+high construal level, mobile phone use+low construal level, non-mobile phone use+high construal level, non-mobile phone use +low construal level), stratified by gender. The results found that the participants assigned to mobile phone use group held a handgrip closed longer than those who assigned to non-mobile phone use group. Participants primed to high construal level held a handgrip closed longer than those who primed to low construal level. Unfortunately, the interaction effect of mobile phone use and construal level was not significant.The findings of the current study supported our hypotheses, mobile phone use will reduce the construal level, lower construal level will further lead to lower self-control. Contradictory relationship exists between human and technical tools, technical tools in many areas will improve people’s lives, highly developed technology may also means that people have a less control of their own behavior. The last 20 years, from television to computer, and now moving forward to mobile Internet (mainly mobile phone). Kevin Kelly vividly compared the modern world to "screen reading" time. When phubbing becoming a lifestyle, thinking style and individuals’ concerns may become more restrictively, and more likely to focus on something specific, to immerse in a more self situation, to promote low-level construal of our environmental and the world, and low construal level will further impair individuals’ self-control. Immediacy of information, and the increasing propensity among adolescents toward phubbing, may promote "mile wide, inch deep" thinking, "seize the moment" life style, and a resistance to the patience and persistence required for in-depth thinking. In addition, adolescents may be more inclined emotional mobile phone use, their mobile phone use (such as self-disclosure) have a higher emotional involvement and self-concern. Emotional mobile phone use is corresponding to the "hot" system of self-control, may have a greater impact on their self-control. The results of this study may have some implication for parents, educators, especially the phubbing, in addition to necessary mobile phone use to maintain interpersonal interaction, we also need to look up, to construct and understand our surrounding environment and world with a broader vision, and better planning and controlling our own behavior and life.