How to tackle smartphone overuse through media education. A randomized controlled trial

In the last decade, digital media have increasingly become part of adolescents’ daily lives, broadening their opportunities to access the internet in complete independence. However, the diffusion of these always-on devices has led to the emergence of unexpected side effects, related to media overuse and information and communication overflow. This article describes how the «Digital Wellbeing-Schools» project, a media education initiative promoted by the University of Milano-Bicocca in collaboration with Fastweb S.p.A., tackled this issue. The project involved more than 3,600 students at grade 10 from 18 upper secondary schools in the Milano and Brianza area. Indeed, one of four modules of the project training package focused on «time and attention management» in smartphone usage. Students were asked to reflect on their habits on the basis of quantitative data obtained using a self-monitoring app (RescueTime). The paper discusses the cognitive and educational techniques used in this module in the light of the literature. The effectiveness of the whole intervention was then tested through a randomized controlled trial. The results experimentally confirm that the activities carried out in this part of the project significantly contributed to a reduction in smartphone over-consumption and problematic use among treated participants compared with controls.