Can a three-second pause change what you do next?
What one real-world experiment tells us about friction, self-nudging, and digital habits.
Most digital distractions have almost no friction.
Tap. Swipe. Open. Repeat.
So what happens when you add a small pause? Researchers actually tested this question.
The one sec experiment
In a 2023 PNAS study, researchers examined one sec, a self-nudging app designed to reduce mindless use of selected smartphone apps. When participants attempted to open a target app, one sec introduced an interruption containing a deliberation prompt and a short waiting period before the app could be opened. PNAS / PubMed ↗
The field experiment included 280 participants over six weeks. The results were notable:
- On average, participants closed the target app instead of continuing after the intervention on 36% of attempted openings.
- Across the six-week period, initial attempts to open target apps decreased by 37% compared with the first week.
- Researchers reported a 57% reduction in actual target-app openings after six weeks.
The nuance: Time delay vs. prompts
The researchers also tested the individual components of the intervention in a separate preregistered online experiment involving 500 participants.
The option to dismiss the consumption attempt had the strongest effect. The time delay also reduced consumption, while the deliberation message by itself was not effective in that experiment. PubMed Citation ↗
That's useful. Because it suggests that "just ask yourself why you're doing this" isn't necessarily enough. The intervention has to change the behavior environment.
A pause isn't a punishment
Good friction should preserve agency. Bad friction simply creates frustration. The difference is important:
A restrictive system says: "You aren't allowed."
Those are very different experiences.
Why Dedoom uses friction
This research is one of the reasons Dedoom treats friction as a behavioral tool rather than a punishment mechanism. The objective isn't to make the internet inaccessible. It's to make autopilot slightly harder.
Sometimes that's enough to turn: "I'll just check for a second" into: "Actually, I came here to do something else."
Source: Grüning, Riedel & Lorenz-Spreen, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 2023.