Cigarette smoking is the leading preventable cause of death and illness in the United States. We tested the usability, acceptability, and efficacy of a smartphone‐based contingency management treatment to promote cessation. We used a nonconcurrent multiple‐baseline design. Participants (N = 14) provided breath carbon monoxide (CO) samples by using a CO meter that was connected to the user's smartphone. An app (mMotiv8) housed on participants' smartphones automatically captured pictures of the CO sampling procedure to validate the end user's identity, and it prompted submissions via a push message delivered to participants' smartphones. Participants earned a $10 incentive for daily abstinence, which was added to a reloadable debit card. Overall, 4% of the CO samples were negative during baseline, and 89% were negative during treatment. Self‐reported usability and acceptability were high, and 85% of the prompted samples were submitted. A smartphone intervention could be scalable and reduce the health consequences and costs associated with cigarette smoking, particularly in rural and low‐income populations.
Problematic social media use can be characterized as that which interferes with relationships, work, school, or sleep. Currently, there are no empirically supported treatments for reducing problematic social media use. We tested a package intervention to reduce the daily duration of social media use measured by a smartphone application with nine undergraduate students who scored as "addicted" to social media via a version of the Internet Addiction Test. The package intervention included contingency management, automated notifications of application use, and the selection of alternative activities. The package intervention was effective at reducing the daily duration of social media use to goal levels, or below, for all participants. Eight out of nine participants showed a decrease in their Internet Addiction Test scores from pre-to postintervention, and overall, participants did not show an increase in the time spent engaged in their selected alternative activities. These findings demonstrate that social media use is amenable to behavioral treatment.
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