- Date: Tuesday 7. November 2023
- Time: 10:30-11:30am
- Location: QUT Gardens Point campus, room P413
Seminar title: Why am I online? An emotion regulation perspective on technology use and over-use
Abstract:
“Recent research in human-computer interaction and psychology suggests that digital devices and services are increasingly being used to support emotion regulation: that is, in the service of managing, altering and coping with affective states such as moods, emotions and stress.
Sometimes these are technologies that were designed for this purpose, such as meditation apps. But typically they are mundane technologies that were designed for something else and have been coopted for emotion regulation.
A team of researchers based at Melbourne, Stanford and University College London has been studying this activity, which we call “digital emotion regulation”. Our research offers a new perspective on technology use, especially forms that appear to be unproductive, as these may in fact represent beneficial emotion regulation.
Our outputs are collected at UniMelb: Digital Emotion Regulation and summarized in recent articles at The Conversation: Why am I online? Research shows it’s often about managing emotions and UniMelb: Your phone, your emotions and everyday life.
I look forward to presenting an overview of our work and discussing it with colleagues at QUT.”
Bio: Greg Wadley is a Senior Lecturer in the HCI group at the University of Melbourne. He collaborates with health and psychology researchers to design, develop and evaluate digital health interventions. He has co-chaired the CHI Health subcommittee (2022/3) and co-organised CHI symposia on Computing and Mental Health (2018/9). Recently he conducted a study of digital emotion regulation in-the-wild with colleagues in HCI and psychology at Melbourne, Stanford and University College London.
QUT School of Computer Science and the Digital Wellbeing Lab are co-hosting this upcoming seminar. A light morning tea will be provided.