New psychology research reveals a vicious cycle involving smartphone use and feelings of disconnection

A new study published in the journal Addictive Behaviors provides evidence that excessive smartphone use and feelings of disconnection fuel each other in a continuous daily cycle. When college students feel unfocused, they often reach for their phones for relief, which actually tends to leave them feeling even more detached the following day. These findings suggest that breaking this loop requires actively replacing screen time with meaningful offline activities.

With the rapid growth of digital technology, problematic smartphone use has become a major concern for young adults. This type of device engagement refers to screen habits that span multiple apps and become difficult to control, eventually interfering with daily life. Such excessive use has been linked to poorer mental health, strained relationships, and lower academic performance.

A related issue is disengagement, which is a temporary state of boredom where a person feels disconnected from their current environment. Disengaged individuals often have difficulty maintaining attention on meaningful tasks and might experience negative emotions. According to psychological theories, this detached feeling acts as a signal that a person is not finding their current activity rewarding.

Some scientists suggest that individuals naturally strive to maintain an optimal level of mental stimulation. When a task feels too repetitive or lacks meaning, an uncomfortable sense of lethargy sets in. Because smartphones provide immediate and endless entertainment, they offer an easy way to escape these uncomfortable feelings of boredom.

“My interest started with how easily smartphones lead to problematic use — basically, when usage becomes dysregulated and hard to control. I focused on first-year students because they’re navigating new autonomy and self-directed learning, which makes them especially vulnerable,” said study author Jeong Jin Yu, a professor in educational studies at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in China.

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“The core puzzle was the link to ‘disengagement’ that struggle to focus on meaningful tasks. While students often reach for their phones to self-stimulate and fix that feeling, it tends to backfire. I wanted to test if this creates a self-reinforcing cycle: does feeling disengaged one day lead to higher phone use, which then leads to even worse disengagement the next? I used daily diaries to confirm if this back-and-forth spiral actually plays out in their daily lives.”

To explore exactly how this dynamic plays out on a daily basis, Yu designed a month-long study. The transition to university is a time when students experience newfound independence, heightened academic demands, and constant access to their devices. By tracking daily fluctuations, Yu aimed to see if feeling disconnected one day leads to more screen time the next, and vice versa.

To investigate this cycle, Yu recruited 138 first-year undergraduate students from two cities in China. The participants were contacted through email and social media platforms. As an incentive for their daily participation, students who completed the questionnaires earned a financial reward in the form of a 100 RMB coupon, which is roughly equal to 14 dollars.

The final analysis included 104 participants who consistently responded to the daily surveys over a 30-day period. The students had an average age of about 18.6 years, and slightly more than half of the group identified as female. The group was highly compliant, with the average participant completing about 27 out of the 30 daily surveys.

Every evening between nine o’clock and their bedtime, the participants completed questionnaires on their personal devices. They answered 32 questions to measure their problematic smartphone use for that specific day. These questions asked them to rate how much they agreed with statements about their inability to regulate their phone habits on a scale from one to six.

The students also answered five questions designed to measure their daily level of disengagement on a scale from one to seven. These items asked participants to indicate how much they felt forced to do things that lacked personal value to them. Higher scores on this specific section indicated a greater sense of momentary boredom and detachment.

Yu used statistical models to separate stable differences between individuals from day-to-day fluctuations within the same person. This technique allowed the researcher to observe how a single student’s behavior changed from one day to the next compared to their own average baseline. The analysis also accounted for the students’ gender and their family’s socioeconomic background, including parental education and household income.

The daily data revealed a clear bidirectional relationship between phone habits and feelings of boredom. On days when a student used their smartphone more than they typically did, they reported feeling more disengaged the very next day. In the opposite direction, on days when a student felt more disconnected than usual, their smartphone use spiked the following day.

This pattern provides evidence for a snowball effect, where small daily habits carry over and reinforce themselves. As a student tries to relieve their boredom by scrolling through apps, they inadvertently set themselves up to feel even less focused the next morning. Over time, this daily reinforcement traps the individual in a self-sustaining cycle of distraction.

Beyond the daily fluctuations, Yu also found consistent associations when comparing different students to one another. Individuals who generally reported higher smartphone use than their peers also tended to experience higher overall levels of disengagement. A persistent inability to reduce screen time consistently amplified a student’s feelings of boredom.

“The main takeaway is that smartphone use and disengagement fuel each other in a vicious cycle,” Yu told PsyPost. “When you feel disconnected or unfocused, you might reach for your phone for relief, but the findings show that this likely makes you feel more disconnected the next day. It’s a snowball effect—small habits today carry over into tomorrow.”

“To break this cycle, you can’t just rely on willpower. You need to replace the scrolling with something meaningful. Whether it’s joining a club, volunteering, or setting strict phone-free study hours, the goal is to actively interrupt that pattern before it becomes your new normal.”

Notably, neither the gender of the student nor their family’s financial background significantly changed the outcome of these models. This suggests that the daily cycle of digital distraction affects a wide variety of students equally. First-year students across different demographics appear vulnerable to this specific behavioral loop.

While the study provides a detailed look at daily habits, there are a few potential misinterpretations and limitations to keep in mind. The research focused exclusively on first-year university students in China, meaning the findings might not apply to other age groups or cultural backgrounds. Additionally, the study relied entirely on students reporting their own behaviors, which can sometimes introduce bias.

“Ideally, future studies would back this up with objective data—like actual screen-time logs—to avoid the biases that come with self-reporting,” Yu said. “Finally, while I established that this cycle exists, I didn’t fully untangle why it happens. I suspect factors like sleep loss or specific app habits (like social media vs. gaming) play a major role, but I need more research to pinpoint the exact mechanisms driving this spiral.”

“My long-term goal is to translate these findings into actionable solutions. First, I plan to dig deeper into the ‘why’ by moving beyond self-reports to objective measures—like actual usage logs—to see precisely how specific apps or sleep disruption drive this cycle. Simultaneously, I want to test practical interventions. I plan to explore how ‘digital well-being education’ and structured extracurricular activities—like volunteer work—can provide meaningful offline alternatives to scrolling.”

“I’m particularly interested in whether simple, timely strategies—like planning prompts or setting phone boundaries during study hours—can effectively interrupt that carryover effect where one bad day spirals into the next,” Yu added. “Ultimately, I aim to develop a concrete toolkit that helps universities support students during that critical transition.”

The study, “Problematic smartphone use and disengagement in first-year college students: A daily diary study of between- and within-person differences,” was authored by Jeong Jin Yu.