Smartphone Reminders to Study: A Double-Edged Sword?

Reminders are a popular feature in smartphone apps designed to promote desirable behaviors that are best performed regularly. But can they also promote students’ use of effective study strategies such as distributing study sessions? In the present study with 85 lower secondary school students aged 10-12, we combined a smartphone-based micro-randomized trial with logfile data of a vocabulary learning app. Students received reminders on some days during the 36-day intervention period. Findings suggest that reminders can be a double-edged sword: Students were more likely to study on days they received a reminder compared to days when they did not receive a reminder. However, when compared to a control group that never received reminders, the effect was not due to students studying more frequently on days with reminders. Instead, they studied less frequently on days without reminders than students in the control group. This effect increased over the study period, with students becoming increasingly less likely to study on days without reminders. Taken together, these results suggest a detrimental side effect of reminders: students become overly reliant on them.