Social Media Breaks: An Opportunity for Recovery and Procrastination

Social media (SM) breaks from studying can either support students' wellbeing and performance by acting as a recovery behaviour or subvert it by acting as a procrastination behaviour. It is currently unclear which influences lead an SM break to be a positive recovery vs. negative procrastination behaviour. A behavioural and emotion regulation (ER) perspective may help to elucidate these influences. In this paper, we report a semi-structured interview study with 20 undergraduates to explore their experiences of SM breaks when studying. Our analysis describes how motivational and environmental factors can influence a break's propensity for recovery or procrastination during the break initiation and execution phases. We apply an ER perspective to these reports and demonstrate how it helps to explain further in which circumstances SM breaks are likely to support recovery or procrastination. Based on this analysis, we present recommendations for designing interventions to support healthy breaks and reduce unhealthy ones.