Disconnect to connect: The benefits of limiting smartphone use at work
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"These factors are crucial for a company's productivity," explains Julia Brailovskaia. With the present study results, the researchers have found a straightforward and low-threshold solution to reach these objectives and simultaneously enhance the mental health and work-life balance of employees.
A comparison of four groups
The researchers divided the participants—who came from many professional fields—into four groups of almost equal size for their study. For one week, the group of smartphone users cut their daily private usage by one hour. The group of sportsmen upped their daily physical activity by thirty minutes.
The combination group performed both; the control group hardly changed their daily schedule.
Before these interventions, all participants answered online questionnaires immediately following and two weeks after the intervention period concluded, so offering information on their well-being, both with relation to employment and mental health.
Depressive symptoms lessened
Work satisfaction and motivation, work-life balance and mental health had notably improved in the smartphone group and the combination group, the researchers found.
More importantly, symptoms of problematic smartphone use and the sense of work overload were much lowered.
Every intervention raised participants' sense of control and helped to lower their depressed symptoms.
Julia Brailovskaia says, "A conscious and regulated decrease of non-work-related screen time, in combination with more physical activity, could improve employees' work satisfaction and mental health." The researcher thinks these interventions could either augment already-existing training initiatives or act as a stand-alone, low-threshold, time- and money-efficient program.
Reference: Julia Brailovskaia, Jakob Siegel, Lena-Marie Precht, Sophie Friedrichs, Holger Schillack, Jürgen Margraf. Less smartphone and more physical activity for a better work satisfaction, motivation, work-life balance, and mental health: An experimental intervention study. Acta Psychologica, 2024; 250: 104494 DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2024.104494
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