Digital platforms have reshaped how we spend our time and attention. Although
technologies increasingly mediate all aspects of human life, there are often subtle
but significant misalignments between what users want, what algorithms can infer
about users and their needs, and what platforms are designed to promote. These
misalignments undermine users’ autonomy over their behaviour, profoundly affecting
their well-being and sense of identity over time.

How do such misalignments emerge? To what extent do algorithms accurately
represent who users are—or who they want to be? Despite growing awareness of
the psychological and social impacts of digital media, we still don’t understand how
these mismatches arise or how to quantify them.

To tackle these questions, our project aims to uncover mechanisms driving three
fundamental misalignments: (i) how users intend to spend their time versus how
they actually spend it, (ii) how users believe they spend their time versus their actual
usage patterns, and (iii) how users perceive their interests and identity versus how
algorithms construct them.

We will recruit adult smartphone users for a three-month study. Participants will log
their intentions and reflect weekly on their long-term goals. In parallel, participants
will donate their digital trace data (app usage, video viewing patterns, etc.) via the
Digital Data Donation Infrastructure (D3I). By combining subjective reflection and
individual-level digital behavioral data, we will make quantitative as well as
qualitative comparisons between users’ stated goals and preferences, and their
actual digital behavior.

Supervisors:

Academy Assistants: tba