Sabrina Norwood

@sabrinanorwood

Postdoc at University of Bern. Researching digital technologies, digital behaviour, and meta-science.

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Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· 2d

The direction of well-being change also depended on where sessions ended. Transitions ending in entertainment were positive while transitions ending in escape were negative. Caveat tho: closing function + well-being were reported in the same prompt.

Heatmap of adjusted well-being change by function transition

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· 2d

Because behavioural function was assessed at both time points, we also examined whether the function reported at session onset remained stable through session close. Spoiler alert: it often did not. In 42% of sessions, participants reported a different function at app close than they had at open.

Sankey plot showing change from reported function at open to function at close

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· 2d

More broadly though, we didn't see a general pattern of TikTok sessions leaving people feeling worse. Point estimates for well-being change were positive across all 4 functions (although the changes were small and CIs included zero for several functions, so pinch of salt).

Figure shows adjusted well-being change per function

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· 2d

🚨 New preprint: In this paper we make the case for measuring social media use at the level of naturally occurring sessions (i.e., beginning when the app/site is opened and ending when it is closed). Across 7 days and 161 participants this gave us nearly 4,000 paired sessions of use 🧵

Depicts the data collection process. 1) participant opens TikTok, 2) open survey is prompted, 3) participant uses TikTok as normal, 4) participant closes TikTok, 5) close survey is prompted

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· 16d

Meme of police saying “you can’t do that” and Ron Swanson from Parks & Rec saying “not to worry. I have a permit” but it’s a blank uno card.

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· Aug 5

But longer delays were associated with more dismissed app-opening attempts (meaning they tried to open their app, encountered the intervention, then chose not to proceed to their target app).

Shows table with app-opening attempts and figure with opening attempts and dismissed app-openings at Week 6

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· Aug 5

And so did 82% of our participants (or at least they said they would have preferred a gradual increase in friction delay). Would you then be surprised if i told you that that didn't actually decrease dropout? Because it didn't.

Shows table with listed dropout per condition and figure showing percent dropout by week

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· Apr 22

My teaching slides were getting a little bare so I asked ChatGPT to create an image. My prompt was simply "create an image of a pigeon watching tiktok where the tiktok videos are of pigeons too." The longer I look the cuter/more silly it gets.

Image of a pigeon sitting on a couch holding a smartphone watching TikTok. The videos show a pigeon walking with the caption "just a little strut" and a group of pigeons that says "my squad with the sunglasses emoji." There's also a poster on the wall of a pigeon wearing sunglasses that reads "stay coo" and a mug that reads "crumbs and vibes." It is the cutest thing.

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· Apr 18

There’s a guy in town that plays one and throat sings!

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· Apr 8

Trying to lock in this week like the world isn’t actively in danger.

Meme of a parrot peaking through an open door with the caption “y’all mind if I scream”

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· Apr 1

This is academia to me

Caption reads: you ever heard of 8 minute abs? This is going to blow it out of the water… 7 minute abs.

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· Feb 17

We then turned these into a concrete, cross-sector roadmap.

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· Jan 26

We argue that "screen time" is too coarse a metric. To understand digital behaviour, we need to look at the function(s) that behaviour serves, not just the form that it takes.

Figure of digital behaviour and the various functions it can serve, displayed by either being driven by positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement.

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· Jan 26

Our preprint has evolved! v2 of “Digital Behaviourism” is out now with a new title, new co-authors, and a deeper dive into the behavioural concepts that shape our online lives. It’s time to move beyond “screen time” and focus on function of online behaviours. osf.io/preprints/ps...

Screenshot of a preprint titled “Digital Behaviourism: A functional approach to behaviour in digital environments”

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· Dec 16

Did you know that from tomorrow, Qualtrics is offering synthetic panels (AI-generated participants)? Follow me down a rabbit hole I'm calling "doing science is tough and I'm so busy, can't we just make up participants?"

Text reads: About synthetic panels
Recruiting the right participants for a study can be difficult. You may not get the exact demographics you need, and the shorter the deadline, the less sure you can be that everyone will answer on time. One possible solution can be to use synthetic panels.

Synthetic panels are powered by a first party proprietary AI model developed here at Qualtrics. Our synthetic panel is trained on thousands of responses from a variety of demographic backgrounds in order to more accurately predict how certain populations would respond to a survey.

Our synthetic panel is based on the United States General Population, and is only available in English. This panel comes with ready-made quotas and target breakouts in order to represent your chosen population and make it easy to launch your survey right away.

Text reads:
Discussion
The current study aimed to conduct a meta-analysis of the TPB when applied to health behaviours which addressed the limitations of previous reviews by including only prospective tests of behaviour, applying RE meta-analytic procedures, correcting correlations for sampling and measurement error, and hierarchically analysing the effect of behaviour type and sample and methodological moderators. Some 237 tests were identified which examined relations amongst model components. Overall the analysis indicated that the TPB could explain 19.3% of the variance in behaviour and 44.3% of the variance in intention across studies. This level of prediction of behaviour is slightly lower than that of previous meta-analytic reviews which have found between 27% (Armitage & Conner, 2001; Hagger et al., 2002) and 36% (Trafimow et al., 2002)
of the variance in behaviour to be explained by intention and PBC.

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· Nov 17

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· Nov 6

and other lies I tell myself

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· Oct 27

Me to the OSF website when it stops responding

Text reads: “don’t make me hate you. Loving you is painful enough.”

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· Aug 25

What if we thought about digital behaviour not in terms of the form that it takes but the psychological functions that it serves? In this preprint we introduce technological behaviourism, a theoretical approach grounded in operant conditioning. @shuhbillskee.bsky.social

figure showing four functions and antecedent behaviour consequence sequence for each

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· Aug 8

Screenshot from the Simpsons of a pig-shaped invitation that reads ‘Come to Homer’s BBBQ. The extra B is for BYOBB.

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· Jul 10

If you’re interested in a new way to describe and analyse digital behaviour, come to my talk to hear about a function-based, behavioural framework at 2pm today! #cyber25

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· Jun 12

Some RFT researcher, probably

Meme of moleman saying “I wanted a science of stimulus relations” from the classic “I was saying boo urns” scene

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· Apr 15

Picked up a copy of Careless People, a memoir written by a former Facebook employee. The cover description claims “as all our lives are upended by technology and those who control it, Careless People will change how you see the world today.”

Photo of a book. The title is Careless People: A story of where I used to work. Smaller text reads “Power. Greed. Madness.” Author is Sarah Wynn-Williams. Cover is bright pink/orange and depicts dolls legs upside down in a blue square.

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· Feb 5

An excellent and very Swiss start to #PSE7

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· Feb 4

My PhD was on stigma reduction toward LGBTQ+ people, and I myself am a bisexual woman. My heart is so sad and my soul is so tired. But I wrote this in my acknowledgments section then, and it’s even more true now. I still see you. I still hear you. I’m so sorry they’re doing this.

Screenshot of text which reads: “to the millions of LGBTQ+ people who face discrimination and stigma every day just for being yourselves. I see you. I hear you. This work is not done. I will continue to fight this fight in every way I can.

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· Jan 17

Thrilled to announce that I will soon be joining the @oiioxford.bsky.social as a Postdoctoral Researcher in Online Environments and Well-being! If anyone has recommendations for must-see places, restaurants, pubs, or walks in Oxford, I’m all ears.

Photo of the Radcliffe Camera. A historic building in Oxford.

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· Dec 16

I’m shamelessly plugging an app that I do research on and fully believe in. I’ve been using one-sec.app myself for a year now and it’s effectively decreased my Instagram openings by 94%. Just look at that beautiful plot😍

Overview of my one sec data since November 2023. Tracking Instagram app openings. Shows a 94% decrease in Instagram use compared to my first week. Shows app openings at 4 times per week now versus 69 times per week in November 2023.

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· Dec 10

We’ve taught our dog to use buttons. This was during a training session, so he’s not always this eager, but buttons really have helped us communicate with each other!

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· Dec 10

Meme based off of the Simpsons. Reads “video games? I knew it was them! Even when it was his dissatisfaction with the US healthcare system, I knew it was them!”

Sabrina Norwood@sabrinanorwood· Nov 29

Last semester @ianhussey.bsky.social and I taught a course that won a student evaluation award. Only 4% of courses in the faculty were evaluated as “excellent” and ours was one of them!