Technology Habits: Progress, Problems, and Prospects

Technology habits have been objects of research for over 100 years and provided heuristic cases for the study of habits over the last two decades. This chapter traces the history of research on information and communication technologies in daily life, with an eye toward measurement and conceptualization problems. Similar to the new technologies of earlier eras, the prominence of current habitual manifestations has raised challenging questions for both researchers and societies. These new-er media habits may exaggerate core habitual mechanisms by providing a wide spectrum of potential cues, possible contexts, and complex rewards—resulting in dynamic habits that appear to be “special”. We discuss how research on technology habits serves to uncover the assumptions, boundaries, and moderators of habit, while calling for a revised approach to address recurring problems in the literature. Altogether, the chapter clarifies how technology habit research contributes to a broader understanding of habitual behaviour.