THE GUILT HELLION:

GUILT PRONENESS DUE TO INCREASED SCREEN TIME IN PANDEMIC

DISCUSSION

Submitted By:

HIMANSHI JOSHI

19214017

Under the Supervision of:

Mrs. Sanchita Srivastava

[Assistant professor]

Submitted to:

Christ (Deemed to be) University, Delhi NCR

07 April 2022
 Even before the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe, there were worries regarding

screen time for welfare, such as social impairments, physical and mental ailment worsening, and

antagonism in young children and teens (Duraiappah et al., 2021). The primary goal of this study

was to see if greater screen use during the epidemic resulted in more guilt or guilt-proneness. As

previously noted, the data offered does not solely focus on college students. This is especially

relevant in the case of India. This research tried to look into it from the standpoint of Indian

undergraduates in their final two years of college. The argument for only accepting these

students is that at this point of their life, there is a sense of diving deeply into the professional

alternatives offered, selecting one, and beginning to work towards it. This brings with it a sense

of duty.

Focusing on this premise, the study can be justified by the fact that some students may

believe they had nearly two years to work on themselves while the dust settled, and they could

have done anything and everything they never had time for, but instead, they end up doing

nothing meaningful for their goal or self-improvement despite constant goal conflicts. A review

of the research suggests a variety of reasons why people prefer to delay and waste time on social

networking, messaging, binge-watching, and other similar activities.

This study tried to look at all of the ways people increased their screen time and, as a

result, experienced feelings of guilt as a result of numerous circumstances. It is undeniable that

maintaining a balance between the short-term pleasures of media use and the possible cost of

media exposure for long-term reasons is becoming increasingly difficult for people. The goal of

this study was fulfilled using quantitative and correlational analysis to evaluate the

guilt-proneness and vulnerability of the sample as a result of increasing screen use.

 Although it’s very clear that increased screen time leads to guilt whenever used for

instant gratification in all the cases where goal conflict occurs. Even if we keep the pandemic

times aside, since the time internet became household accessibility, using media for short time

pleasure is bread butter easy. While reviewing factors that motivate this behavior even though it

would lead to a feeling of guilt and shame many things may be considered.

Out of so many ways out there which lead to increased screen time, a cross-sectional,

cross-nation study on binge-watching reports that although over half (53,3 percent) of

participants found themselves working from home during the lockdown period, the majority

indicated that they increased their internet/TV usage substantially daily (73,7 percent) (27.6

percent ). The adoption of the binge-watch as a coping mechanism could imply that. It is

regarded as a maladaptive coping process because people replace the completely unacceptable

actual events with the wild mind and fantasy of web series and TV shows (Lazarus and Folkman,

1984). The psychological rationale behind binge-watching is to pass time and escape

boredom(52.6%), stress relief (25%), loneliness resolving (15.7 percent ) leading to instant

gratification (Dixit et al., 2020). The continuous availability of binge-watching video helps to

satisfy requirements anytime one wishes and leads to a conflict between short-term enjoyment

and prospective susceptibility to media (Hofmann et al., 2016). The study also mentions how

they still can’t say if binge-watching will have any long-term effect on the physical and mental

wellbeing of the people.

Another study “Binge Watching and College Students: Motivations and Outcomes” by

Swati Panda, Satyendra C. Pandey attempts to harmonize the argument by looking at the

different reasons and results that make college students more watchful of video streaming

platforms like Netflix and Prime video by using a mixed approach of qualitative and quantitative
studies. Social interplay, escaping reality, easy access to TV material, and advertising drive

college students to spend more time viewing as per their findings. If after binge-viewing

individuals feel negatively gratified, they wish to invest more time doing the same. (Panda &

Pandey, 2017). Oxford Dictionary (2013) defines binge-viewing as “to watch multiple episodes

of a television program in rapid succession, typically employing DVDs or digital streaming,”

while Netflix and Harris Interactive, offer another definition of binge-watching as “watching

between 2–6 episodes of the same TV show in one sitting” (Netflix 2013). However, the

limitation of this study is that the sample is mostly limited to undergraduate students at a

particular university and should be expanded to include students from other institutions as well.

All data were self-reported, which could lead to issues with reliability and validity. Furthermore,

it suggests that a longitudinal study is required to follow students' binge-watching behavior,

capturing both positive and negative motivations for binge-watching as well as their post-binge

behavior, and should use a variety of approaches to better understand the binge-watching

phenomenon.

While another paper ‘Defining new viewing behaviors: What makes and motivates TV

binge-watching?’ explored by focus group discussion of university students in the United States

that there are four emergent incentives that contribute to binge-watching among individuals:

(1) anticipation of what was going to happen next – aided by both content and technological

aspects, (2) mood management and excitement/arousal, (3) procrastination and escapism,

(4) social goals – related to both co-viewing, discussing material with others, and character

identification. The limitation was the excessive reliance on focus groups which many times fall

into the trap of group dynamism and peer pressure thus influencing the result (Rubenking

et al., 2018).
 Since the internet is the main platform for binge-watching, the user could go online to

obtain one reward, but eventually another, since the user experience during its use can activate

additional rewarding features (Sundar and Limperos. 2013), thus leading us to explore other

ways of increased screen time. In the paper ‘Too Much or Too Little Messaging? Situational

Determinants of Guilt About Mobile Messaging’ the authors talk about how culpability is

connected with mobile messaging and how failure to restrain oneself from excessive texting

during goal conflicts may result in excessive guilt. This research concurrently analyses both the

limiting circumstances of mobile communication – goal conflict and availability norm. The

research looks at emotions of guilt around the use of mobile messages. It claims that culpability

may develop if we text too much when we should do something different, and also when other

people expect that we may be available easily by communication, but we do not fulfill the

expectation. For findings of this experiment participants were instructed to imagine messaging or

not to use messages) in several situations which confirmed these two hypotheses. But the

expected guilt feelings did not materialize in a second experiment in which the subjects faced

conditions supposedly causing guilt (Halfmann et al., 2021). Based on the limitations of the

paper, the researcher suggests that the future study can evaluate the various guilt measures or

related conscious emotions. One can also explore guilt mechanisms about media application.

Now if we look at social media in general as another factor resulting in increased screen

time, the paper ‘Left to Their Own Devices: College Students' ''Guilty Pleasure'' Media Use and

Time Management by Elliot Panek supports the argument that self-controlling pupils are capable

of spending more time in recreational media and are capable of making themselves guilty.

Conclusions reveal that self-control levels are a more precise predictor of how much Social

Network Sites and online video use are used than the reasons given by users for accessing the
Internet. Furthermore, the analysis differentiates between numerous media activities undertaken

by college students and sets up partnerships between self-regulation, guilt, and certain uses while

showing that for other uses there is no such link (Panek, 2014). The biggest limitation of this

study was that it only used self-report data and also that there was no comparison group

concerning the type of study this was.

The paper ‘The Guilty Couch Potato: The Role of Ego Depletion in Reducing Recovery

Through Media Use’ deals with ego depletion as an influencing mechanism for media-based

recovery of stress. The links between ego depletion, procrastination, guilt, pleasure, vitality, and

recovery have been evaluated with the use of online study data (N = 471) using structural

equation models. Results reveal that ego depletion can enhance the chance of unfavorable

assessments of the use as a form of procrastination of interactive (video games) and

noninteractive (television) media (Reinecke et al., 2014). The consequent culpability is

negatively related to the rehabilitation experience of entertainment. Thus, the psychological

recovery potential of entertainment media can benefit ego-depleted individuals less, despite their

increased need for recovery (Reinecke et al., 2014). This limitation alludes to the data collection

approach utilized in this investigation. An online survey asked participants to reflect on the

previous day and answer questions regarding their willingness and their use of entertaining

media in hindsight. The retrospective self-reports evaluated in this study could have been

affected by some individuals' attempts to justify or streamline the use of entertaining media

through high levels of ego deprivation.

To explain the underlying motivational mechanisms related to self-control failure and the

conformity of the availability norm based on Self - determination theory can be looked at to

assess the guilt for increased screen time. SDT addresses what motivates human behavior and
distinguishes between autonomous and controlled behavioral kinds (Ryan & Deci, 2000a). While

independent behaviors are marked by freedom of choice sentiments, controlled types of activity

are "associated by pressure and control experience" (Ryan & Deci, 2000b, p. 65). Intrinsic

motivation is the prototype of autonomous motivation, and it refers to behaviors that people

engage in because they promise to satisfy their core needs for relatedness, competence, and

autonomy (Ryan & Deci, 2000b). Extrinsic motivation is the inverse of intrinsic motivation.

Extrinsically motivated activity is motivated by a benefit other than the behavior, such as

avoiding punishment or earning a reward (Ryan & Deci, 2000b). SDT distinguishes between

various types of extrinsic motivation with differing degrees of autonomy, that is, the degree to

which individuals regard their conduct as volitional vs controlled (Deci & Ryan, 2008). As per

the theory, social circumstances that allow for the satisfying of basic needs encourage the

internalization of external controls, resulting in a greater degree of autonomy (Deci & Ryan,

2008). The limitation of this study includes that the study is not based on adolescent’s

mechanisms and does not acknowledge psychological individual differences.

According to self-control research, guilt emerges when people fail to direct their behavior

toward long-term goals and instead succumb to short-term temptations (Hofmann et al., 2017).

Researchers have referred to individuals' inherent incentive to utilize media to explain why they

frequently fail to exercise self-control over media use (Hofmann et al., 2017). They believe that

media consumption delivers immediate pleasure because it frequently satisfies basic wants, such

as the urge for relatedness (van Koningsbruggen, Hartmann, & Du, 2018). According to

researchers investigating self-control over media use, individuals learn to equate media usage

with pleasure as a result of positive experiences with need satisfaction (Hofmann et al., 2017;

van Koningsbruggen, Hartmann, Eden, & Veling, 2017). As a result, people frequently prefer
media consumption above other responsibilities or long-term goals unknowingly (e.g., van

Koningsbruggen et al., 2018). Individuals who are motivated and can exercise self-control can

withstand such media temptations (Hofmann et al., 2009). Feelings of guilt, on the other hand,

occur when self-control fails and individuals perceive a conflict between their media use and a

competing goal or activity (Tracy & Robins, 2004).

There is so much research available on how screen time results in guilt and recent

research also shows how in the COVID pandemic the screen time has increased within all age

groups as well as across cultures. First off, this increased screen time due to the pandemic has not

been checked entirely based on the Indian college-going students, and also the guilt factor has

not been assessed yet. Secondly, no research according to the reviewed literature has been done

to assess the guilt-proneness that might occur with the increased screen time due to Pandemic.

This research focused on answering the major above-mentioned loopholes by using statistical

methodology of correlation.

The present study derived its rationale from two unexamined canvases: (1) to check how

among Indian College going students, guilt increased with increased screen time and (2)if screen

time affects guilt-proneness because of the increased screen time during the pandemic?

As mentioned above, the available research doesn’t focus exclusively on college students. This is

more true in the Indian context. The main focus of this research was to check if the increased

screen time during the pandemic led to increased guilt. This was examined from the viewpoint of

Indian undergraduates who are in their last two years of college. The research also focused on the

patterns of guilt-proneness due to increased screen time, to date. To based the study on this pillar

can be reasoned by considering that some students might feel they got almost two years to work

on themselves while the dust was settling and they could have done anything and everything they
never had time for but instead they end up doing nothing significant for their goal or personal

development despite the constant goal conflicts. The review of literature provides many reasons

for why one chooses to procrastinate and spend time on social media or messaging or

binge-watching etc. This study took into consideration all of the ways one increased their screen

time and thus ended up with feelings of guilt due to different factors to drive its result.

This research will follow a correlational quantitative design and tends to measure and

describe the relationship between screen time and guilt , screen time and guilt prone-ness.

Correlation will also be drawn between total guilt and procrastination to see if any pertains.

The SPSS test shows that all of our variables are positively correlated which means that increase

(or decrease) in one variable results in increase (or decrease) in the other variable. The

correlation between screen time and total guilt implies that the relationship between screen time

and guilt is of very weak positive correlation or negligible correlation and hence it can be said

that total screen time is not responsible as a major factor for inciting guilt in an individual thus

proving our hypothesis wrong. Next, to see if any sort of correlation exists between guilt and

procrastination as supposed in our hypotheses, we found out that the relationship between guilt

and procrastination is again of negligible correlation and hence it can be said that we cannot

really say that the two factors are dependent on each other although they do affect each other in a

positive direction. Now the only hypothesis which was strongly supported was that which

correlated guilt proneness and screen time. We ran another 2- tailed Pearson test where

correlation came as 0.932 which implies that the relationship between guilt proneness and screen

time is of very high positive correlation which means that both of them affect each other at a

very high level. As screen time increases (or decreases) , guilt proneness also increases (or

decreases).
 Implications of the Study

As has been stated in the above section, this research attempted to find the relationship

between screen time and guilt/guilt-proneness in college-going individuals.The expected

implications of the study-

Firstly, understanding if the increased screen time relates to increasing guilt or no matter

how much the screen time is, the guilt remains the same with no such variation. This would help

in understanding and designing interventions for the same although this research did not find a

very high correlation between guilt and screen time but it did have a very high positive

correlation between guilt proneness and screen time which suggests that measures can be

designed for people who are prone to experiencing guilt because of high screen time.

Secondly, it will reveal the patterns of guilt-proneness among undergraduate students if

studied more. This may help us know why this tendency occurs only in certain students and may

be taken further to study if socio-economic culture or other factors like parenting, environment,

birth order, etc plays any sort of role in it. This study will also provide new directions for

research within the domain of guilt and guilt-proneness as no research as of now has been done

to link these concepts with screen time. Therefore this will enrich the existing theory in many

ways.

Limitations of the Study

The limitations of the study is that the sample is restricted to only the undergrads who are

in their last final years. Because of this limitation it is difficult to generalize the result of the

study for all the college going students. Secondly, all data is self-reported, which could lead to

issues with reliability and validity. These limitations of the study may affect the generalization of

the results. Also, the study does not evaluate the various guilt measures or related conscious
emotions and guilt mechanisms about media application. There are many factors leading to guilt

but this research only focuses on guilt due to screen-time. This may lead to confusion in the

minds of the participants as well as the researcher whether the guilt is due to the other factors or

just because of the increased screen time.

Directions for future research

Undergraduate students' patterns of guilt-proneness can be studied by researchers. This

may help us understand why this propensity only affects a subset of pupils, and it might be used

to investigate if socioeconomic culture or other factors such as parenting, environment, birth

order, and so on play a role. Because no research has been done to link these notions with screen

time, this study will also present new directions for research in the domain of guilt and

guilt-proneness.

As no real correlation could be found between guilt and screen time attempts can be

made to restudy this on a larger scale so as to be sure if or not any such correlation occurs.

Conclusion

Coronavirus led to a global health disaster in the 2019 outbreak and dramatically

impacted our perspective of the truth and our everyday lives. Not only did the number of cases

and transmission patterns endanger our sense of safety, but also security methods devised to limit

the spread of the virus demanded social alienation, something which is against human nature

which is to take refuge in the presence of others. In this climate of physical threats, social and

physical estrangement, the role of various mass media and social media can not be ignored. Of

course, this resulted in more time for the screen. This research aimed to study guilt-proneness

and susceptibility of undergraduates who are in their last years due to increased screen time with
quantitative analysis using correlational analysis. This helped us to identify aspects, tendencies,

and relationships between the chosen variables as they exist in the real world.
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