Digital Disconnection as a Self-Regulatory Strategy Against Procrastination

Digital media are pervasive and offer various short-term rewards, yet they may undermine the achievement of long-term goals by fostering procrastination—the irrational delay of intended tasks. Research documents that media users try to avoid procrastination through digital disconnection, the voluntary and temporary reduction of digital media use. We examine the effectiveness of such disconnection strategies. Combining theoretical perspectives on psychological processes of self-regulation and digital disconnection, our study investigates whether goal conflicts and trait self-control make using disconnection more likely and whether disconnection is in turn associated with less procrastination. In an experience sampling study with N = 237 young adult participants and T = 12,408 observations, we find that in situations in which participants experience stronger goal conflicts they are more likely to engage in digital disconnection and that individuals who experience higher goal conflict are more likely to disconnect. Additionally, those with higher trait self-control disconnected more. Most notably, disconnection was associated with lower procrastination on the within-person level: In situations with more disconnection, procrastination was lower. Exploratory analyses find that this effect also persisted to the following situation. Our results show that engaging in digital disconnection can be an effective self-regulatory strategy to reduce procrastination.