Distraction or Life Saver?

Abstract

Previous research has shown that communication technologies may make it challenging for working professionals to manage the boundaries between their work life and home life. For college students, however, there is a less clear definition of what constitutes work and what constitutes home life. As a result, students may use different boundary management strategies than working professionals. To explore this issue, we interviewed 29 undergraduates about how they managed boundaries between different areas of their life. Interviewees reported maintaining flexible and permeable boundaries that are not bounded physically or temporally. They used both technological and non-technological strategies to manage different life spheres. Interviewees saw technology as a major source of boundary violations but also as a boundary managing strategy that allowed them to achieve better life balance. Based on these findings, we propose design implications for tools to better support the boundary management processes of undergraduate students.

It Takes Work: How University Students Manage Role Boundaries when the Future is Calling

“…Eller et al (2016) found that temporal strategies were important for university students to be able to manage their multiple roles and that they assisted students to gain the most from their roles. Lim et al (2017) supported these results by finding that undergraduate students used temporal strategies to allocate time to each role. Since time is a fixed resource, it is necessary for students to decide strategically how to best utilise their time, especially when structuring their time to meet role responsibilities.…”

“…For example, students might feel uncomfortable telling their employers not to contact them while they are studying for fear that could compromise their employment or telling their lecturers that they cannot attend class on a certain day due to work for fear that this could compromise their academic grading. Also, students communicating they do not want to be contacted while in a given role might not be effective as they have to manage violations via multiple communication channels (e.g., mobile phones, social media, text messaging, email; Lim et al (2017).…”

Defining Digital Wellbeing Literacy in Remote Work Integrated Learning

“…While remote working has the potential to enable a better worklife balance and wellbeing, because of the minimized commute time and improved flexibility in juggling personal commitments (Cho et al, 2022;Lima & Souza, 2017;Tamunomiebi & Oyibo, 2020), the boundaries between work and life must be continually managed to achieve and maintain improved work-life balance. This is challenging for working professionals, and even more difficult for HE students (Cho et al, 2022;Lim et al, 2017), including WIL students. Work-life balance has been reportedly a challenge for many students, especially at the early stages of WIL programs (An et al, 2021).…”

InteractOut: Leveraging Interaction Proxies as Input Manipulation Strategies for Reducing Smartphone Overuse

“…In this theory, human behaviors are mentally controlled by two "systems" of thinking: an intuitional, unconscious, and spontaneous process (System 1) and an analytical, self-aware, and deliberative process (System 2). To engage users, app designers often try to cater to one's desire for immediate gratification and override their logical thinking [40,44,67].…”