Screen time apps that allow smartphone users to manage their screen time are assumed to combat negative effects of smartphone use. This study explores whether a social media restriction, implemented via screen time apps, has a positive effect on emotional well-being and sustained attention performance. A randomized controlled trial (N = 76) was performed, exploring whether a week-long 50% reduction in time spent on mobile Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube is beneficial to attentional performance and well-being as compared to a 10% reduction. Unexpectedly, several participants in the control group pro-actively reduced their screen time significantly beyond the intended 10%, dismantling our intended screen time manipulation. Hence, we analyzed both the effect of the original manipulation (i.e. treatment-as-intended), and the effect of participants’ relative reduction in screen time irrespective of their condition (i.e. treatment-as-is). Neither analyses revealed an effect on the outcome measures. We also found no support for a moderating role of self-control, impulsivity or Fear of Missing Out. Interestingly, across all participants behavioral performance on sustained attention tasks remained stable over time, while perceived attentional performance improved. Participants also self-reported a decrease in negative emotions, but no increase in positive emotions. We discuss the implications of our findings in light of recent debates about the impact of screen time and formulate suggestions for future research based on important limitations of the current study, revolving among others around appropriate control groups as well as the combined use of both subjective and objective (i.e., behavioral) measures.

Introduction: Recovery Colleges (RCs) facilitate a peer-supported learning environment, co-created bottom-up for and by people with mental vulnerabilities. They explicitly aim to facilitate something different from traditional mental healthcare services, as their ideology is rooted in an emancipatory movement (with focus on peer support, empowerment, and personal recovery). RCs’ ideology comes with key peer support values such as equity, reciprocity, connectedness and empowerment. This study provides an experiential description of an RC practice, scrutinizing how peer support (PS) values are enacted and how partakers experience such value-driven practice.Methods: This study employs triangulation by combining twin-interviews, participatory observations (with auto-ethnographic elements), and (internal) documentation. All aspects of this study were co-created with experiential researchers who are RC partakers. 26 RC partakers were interviewed by a duo of an academic and an experiential researcher. Additionally, the first author conducted participatory observations over several years.Results: RC practice is described as a learning, social, and organizational space, each with their own physical and experiential elements. Our analysis showed that enacting PS values ultimately was about making or holding space, which was experienced as carrying both opportunities and challenges for recovery. We zoom in on challenges regarding collaborative learning, taking up and safeguarding space, and organizational growth.Discussion: Our findings highlight how RCs facilitate opportunities for recovery by fostering spaces for collaborative learning, mutual support and co-creation, while also revealing the fragility of these spaces. Experiences in RC practice are highly context- and person dependent. Navigating in such practice therefore requires continuous reflection and dialogue among all involved. To allow for such a culture to emerge and sustain, organizational free space should be safeguarded, minimizing constraints or interference from external parties.