**Abstract**

Based on current digital culture, this chapter aims to provide an updated view of dissociative experiences as no-psychopathological symptoms of flow experiences. It has been hypothesized that prolonged exposures to smartphone screens could be a predictor of altered states of consciousness (flow) and that sometimes these prolonged exposures could degenerate into dissociative phenomena. Participants were 643 high school students aged between 13 and 23 years (M = 16.08; SD = 1.79). They were asked to answer four self-report questionnaires about the habits of smartphone usage, the perception of problematic smartphone use, and the assessment of dissociative symptoms and experiences (e.g., bizarre sensory experiences, absorption and imaginative involvement [AII], depersonalization and derealization). Gender differences emerged both in smartphone usage habits and some dissociative scales. Two gender-specific stepwise linear regressions showed that problematic smartphone use is one of the stronger predictors of dissociative symptoms. Results support the idea that in an adolescents' community sample prolonged exposition to smartphone screens plays a role in the manifestation of dissociative symptoms. This is closely connected with experiences of AII, which could reinforce the use of devices contributing significantly to establishing a causal circularity between smartphone prolonged usage and AII phenomena.

**Keywords:** smartphone overuse, flow experience, dissociative symptoms, digital habits, adolescents

#### **1. Introduction**

Typical images of our time show teenagers, side by side, with their eyes lost in their smartphones. Currently, the majority of children and teens prefer smartphones to connect online. The time spent online is difficult to estimate accurately, because with a smartphone always at hand "internet use has become continuous and interstitial, filling up the intervals between daily activities" ([1], p. 22).

Moreover, children and teens often do not perceive watching a series episode or a film by a subscription video on demand services (SVOD) as time spent online [1]. Nevertheless, it seems important to succeed in estimating the online spent time and the engaging activities to evaluate their psychological consequences too. It has been estimated that the time spent by Italian adolescents on social networks ranged from "less than an hour a day" (8%) to "I'm always connected" (4%), with a prevalence of "2/3 hours a day" (43%) [2]. If interacting through a social is a Bronfenbrenner's molar daily activity [3], it is also "a constraint on involvement in alternative activities" because time is finite ([4], p. 1188).

The smartphone is a device built to return immediate rewards during its use. Therefore, it is plausible to say that the various visual elements on the backlit screens function as "attentional facilitators" capable of helping the user to maintain an active, pleasant, and positive concentration on the action to the point of experiencing total absorption. Csíkszentmihályi [5, 6] defines as "flow experience" the total absorption in an activity, whereby a person loses the awareness of the surrounding space and its stimuli, including time and even physiological needs.

#### **1.1 Flow experience**

Flow is "the holistic sensation that people feel when they act with total involvement and the experience is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sake of doing it" ([5], p. 36). According to Csíkszentmihályi, the necessary condition for experiencing a state of flow is to perceive enjoyment and concentration. People who experience a state of flow will find an assuring pleasure in their activities that are perceived to be doing. The optimal experience is a flow of consciousness in which the person becomes one with the action he or she performs, is completely involved, and absorbed in the activity. This concept has been extensively studied and analyzed from different perspectives and in relation to many other factors, including time. Concentration is very intense, there is no time for problems or stimuli from the external environment. The sense of time becomes distorted, the experience is so satisfying that the person will do it just for the sake of it. The activity becomes so engaging that the person places him/herself in a condition of passivity toward time. It happens to everyone to be so immersed in reading or browsing online that they do not perceive the passage of time. This dynamic is very interesting if we think about how much flow can intervene in our daily commitments. Flow experiences sometimes occur by chance, other times they are actively sought by the person, they are sought because they are associated with a pleasant experience that provides satisfaction. Csíkszentmihályi [6] analyzed different types of activities to identify those that most frequently create an optimal experience condition. He found that the activities that give a sense of discovery, even if minimal, were the ones that put the person into a state of flow more frequently. Thus, the more interesting and stimulating the activity is, the more the likelihood that the person enters a state of flow increases. Boring activities or activities with a low creativity index limit the feeling of discovery in the person and therefore also the possibility of entering a state of flow. In this regard, we can remember that surfing online and social is very stimulating.

Surfing online, on social networks, or searching for information on Google allows us to always have an incentive to continue browsing, discover new things, and stay in the state of flow. Neuroscientific research has shown interesting data [7]: cortical activity decreases when people focus intensely on a task. Instead of increasing with effort, it seemed that the investment of attention decreased it. A different measurement also showed that people who focus intensely *Adolescents Suspended in the Space-Time: Problematic Use of Smartphone… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101632*

on a specific task were more accurate in sustained attention tasks. This leads us to believe that flow contributes and influences concentration on the task. The more the individual focuses on browsing online, the more he/she has the feeling of being absorbed and external stimuli, including time, fade into the background (for a review see [7]).

Within the flow theory, concentration explains the individual's state of flow. One's addiction to smartphone usage requires a time-consuming flow where one spends full and unbroken concentration [8]. For an addiction to happen, one needs to acquire temporal and cognitive concentration on the task at hand. As the concentration intensifies, one can be said to be in a state of addiction [8]. Another term for concentration is "attention focus" [9]. It reflects users' immersion in doing something they prefer. Users may often concentrate on the smartphone which can lead to harmful consequences, especially on movement. When someone is focusing on using a smartphone in a dangerous place whereby right, they should focus on a task at hand such as in a subway or while driving, the use of smartphone is shifting their experience and attentional focus. Thus, the need to develop an in-depth analysis of concentration in smartphone addition is influential in understanding this addictive behavior [9].

In fact, we all experience flow on a daily basis and at many times of the day. We experience it while we are doing something that we know how to do very well or something we have learned so precisely and mechanically that we do not need to think while we do it. Flow can modify the perception of the passage of time and other individuals' emotional and cognitive processes. Sometimes prolonged exposures can degenerate into dissociative phenomena.

#### **1.2 Visual display unit dissociative trance**

The flow experience has some points in common with visual display unit (VDU) dissociative trance [10], a state that has been studied in people who experimented with a different state of consciousness while using computers for a prolonged time. In this case, it is referred to VDU dissociative trance as a clinical manifestation of compulsive use of technology that could lead to compromise people's daily lives.

However, some flow conditions seem non-pathological dissociative experiences, but they typically occur as moments of the day when you simply "go away" for a few seconds. Contrary to Caretti's views [10], we consider these VDU dissociative trances as a form of normative dissociation [11], which refers more specifically to the disconnection between the cognitive processes of thought, memory, sense of identity, and the rest of individual psychological systems.

Milton Erickson [12] was the first to realize that trance states are not extraordinary phenomena but are rather frequent events common to all people. The term "dissociation" means the separation of a part or group of mental processes from the rest of consciousness. The concept of "trance" describes an alteration of the state of consciousness like sleep, but with electroencephalographic waves like the waking state. During the trance state, people lose consciousness and contact with reality until they return to their normal conditions, often accompanied by amnesia. These alterations can be sudden or gradual, transitory, or chronic [13]. The state of trance implies dissociation. Thus, we speak of *non-pathological dissociation*, an alteration of the state of consciousness, which however is not part of a psychiatric disorder. Nonpathological dissociation typically involves the alteration or the temporary separation of normally integrated mental processes: these experiences include "daydreaming," the imagination and the absorption experienced in "normal" everyday experiences [14].

### **1.3 Aims and hypothesis of the study**

This study aimed to explore the possible precursors of dissociative experiences associated with problematic smartphone usage.

It was hypothesized that: (a) extended exposures to smartphone screens could induce altered states of consciousness (flow) capable of modifying the perception of the passing time and other emotional and cognitive aspects of the individual; and (b) sometimes, if prolonged these altered states can degenerate into dissociative phenomena. Therefore, the hypothesis we tested with a community sample of adolescents are:

H1: Problematic use of smartphones is positively related to dissociative phenomena.

H2: The prolonged exposure to a smartphone's backlit screen is a predictor of different states of consciousness (flow).

### **2. Method**

#### **2.1 Participants**

Participants were 643 students (337 males, 52.1%; 294 females, 46.0%; 12 undeclared-gender people, 1.9%) aged 13–23 years (*M* = 16.08; *SD* = 1.79). They were recruited in three public high schools in Messina (Italy): a random sampling of 24 first, third and fifth classes was carried out. Participants were presented with an informed consent form with the study aims and the authorization to detect personal data in accordance with Italian legislation. Underage participants were authorized by their parents.

#### **2.2 Measures and procedure**

A pen-and-paper self-report survey was applied. It consisted of:


smartphone's usage, others items help to investigate adolescents' behavior in social decision making (e.g., choosing between meeting a friend *in vivo* or contacting him/her through the smartphone).

The scale is monofactorial. The score is obtained by adding the points of each item (range 14–56): The higher the score, the more intense the involvement in the use of the smartphone. In this study, the reliability of the scale was confirmed to be good (Cronbach's alpha = .80).

c. The Dissociation scale of the *Internet Use, Abuse, Addiction* (UADI) [16]. UADI is an Italian questionnaire composed of 75 items with responses on 5 points Likert scale (1 = *absolutely false* to 5 = *totally true*). The UADI consists of five different scales that allow to investigate the degree of impairment of adolescent behavior in relation to Internet use. For this research, only the 15 item Dissociation (Dis) subscale was used.

The DisUADI scale presents a list of items describing some dissociative symptoms such as bizarre sensory experiences, depersonalization, derealization, tendency to alienate or to escape from reality, that are thought to be associated with long exposure to Web surfing. In this study, the DisUADI scale has been modified from the original to make it more suitable for the modern use of internet access by smartphone. Very good the reliability in this study (Cronbach's alpha = .85).

d. The *Adolescent Dissociative Experience Scale* (A-DES), a 30-item questionnaire about the dissociative experiences that people can usually have in their everyday life [17]. The Italian version developed by Schimmenti [18] was used. Respondents were asked to answer (from 0 = *never* to 10 = *always*) about the frequency of the experiences they had had in specific situations. The A-DES total score is equal to the mean of all item scores. Four subscale scores can also be calculated in the following areas: *dissociative amnesia* (e.g., sense of loss during action executions, lack of memories of what has just been done, perceived past events as fragmentary, and so on), *absorption and imaginative involvement* (e.g., dissociative phenomena linked to the sense of time-related to the activities, the degree of attentional involvement experienced, and to confusion about the actions in progress, with a mixture of reality and imagination), *depersonalization and derealization* (e.g., mindbody-context dissociations, phenomena of "identity fluctuation," and a sense of estrangement from oneself), and *passive influence* (i.e., the passivity of the individual with regard to the actions performed by him/herself, as if actions did not depend on his/her will and therefore they were suffered) [19]. In this study, for all subscales reliability was acceptable (Cronbach's alpha = .77 for dissociative amnesia; .69 for absorption and imaginative involvement; .88 for depersonalization and derealization; .76 for passive influence), and excellent for A-DES total (alpha = .93).

After the principal's authorization, the questionnaires were collectively administered in every classroom under the supervision of two of the study authors.

#### **2.3 Data analysis**

First, distribution statistics for all measures were calculated and then group differences (males *vs.* females) were tested through *F* tests (ANOVAs and MANOVAs). Subsequently, measure associations by Pearson's *r* coefficients were estimated. Finally, two stepwise linear regressions were calculated to identify predictor factors of DisUADI scores. Data were processed with IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows 19.0.
