Left to Their Own Devices

Abstract

New media provide college students with an unprecedented number of ways to spend their unstructured time. Research on decision making suggests that choosers low in self-control presented with proximate options will eschew tasks that provide delayed benefit in favor of immediate gratification and will experience guilt when they are aware of the tradeoff between immediate gratification and long-term benefits. A survey of college students ( N = 458) suggests that users are aware of overuse of leisure media because of deficits in self-control, in particular two proximate media experience (social networking sites [SNS] and online video). Of these, only online video viewing is associated with less time spent on schoolwork. Though this study is correlational and thus does not definitively establish causality, the evidence suggests that the interaction between the high-choice media environment and users’ self-control may account for a decline in learning among college students.