Research shows that people who are prone to 'mind wandering,' a condition where they are unable to concentrate and their thoughts wander, tend to use smartphones more frequently
Spontaneous Mind Wandering and Smartphone Use - Lara L. Jones, Gregory A. Norville, Zachary I. Wunder, 2025
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00332941251330555
Spontaneous mind wandering linked to heavier social smartphone use
https://www.psypost.org/spontaneous-mind-wandering-linked-to-heavier-social-smartphone-use/
Previous studies have shown that people who experience more mind wandering also tend to use their smartphones more frequently, but these studies were based only on questionnaire surveys. Therefore, researchers at Wayne State University conducted a detailed investigation into the relationship between mind wandering and smartphone use frequency using objectively recorded smartphone usage.
The study involved an online survey of 188 undergraduate students in the United States. All participants were iPhone users, and data on how much they used their smartphones each week was collected using the iPhone's Screen Time feature. The survey was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, so smartphone usage may have been higher than at other times.
To measure mind wandering, the researchers used several questionnaires, including established rating scales and different scales to distinguish between intentional mind wandering (e.g., 'I'm bored with a repetitive task so I'll think about something else') and unintentional mind wandering (e.g., 'I find myself lost in thought while doing a repetitive task').
The survey found that participants spent an average of 17 hours or more per week on social media apps than on games, education, and other apps. The paper calls the mindset of always being aware of online communication on social media and being able to connect at any time 'online vigilance,' and distinguishes it from pathological states such as smartphone addiction, but says that problems can arise in some situations.
The analysis showed that participants who were more online alert also used social media apps more frequently and scored higher on unintentional mind wandering. The researchers concluded that people who were more prone to unintentional mind wandering were more likely to be distracted by the online world, which led to more time spent on social apps. This pattern did not hold for intentional mind wandering.
Research also shows evidence that smartphone notifications, both from messages and apps, are associated with increased time spent on smartphones, which may lead to increased online vigilance and unintentional mind wandering.
One thing to note about the study's results is that the study used correlation analysis, so while it shows that mind wandering is associated with online vigilance and smartphone usage time, it is unclear whether the causal relationship is that 'people who are prone to mind wandering have high online vigilance and use smartphones frequently' or 'people who use smartphones frequently and are highly online vigilance are prone to mind wandering.' In addition, while online vigilance and mind wandering are similar states, the study did not specify the content of thoughts during mind wandering, so it is unclear whether mind wandering is caused by thoughts about online activities.
Future research is needed to use sampling methods that can track more detailed thoughts and accurately analyze real-time thoughts and behaviors.
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