Short-term implact of technologies

Introduction

The Impacts of Digital Technology Use on Well-Being

Information and communication technologies (ICT) play an increasingly important role in human lives. Therefore, we combine insights from various scientific disciplines and employ state-of-the-art data collection methods to examine the impacts of these technologies on human well-being and health.

What We Study

We have previously studied the effects of technology use and online content consumption (such as violent video games, sleep, sexual content, communication, and social media) in adolescent populations. Building on these findings, we now aim to provide more detailed and accurate insights into how the use of communication technologies influences the well-being of Czech adults. At the same time, we are broadening the scope of our research to include topics related to work life and digital well-being.

An increasing number of occupations today require the use of technology to such an extent that it has become more difficult for employees to separate its use for work and leisure purposes. Establishing and maintaining clear boundaries between work and personal life has therefore become more challenging. People often use their phones for both professional and personal matters or have work email accounts on their personal computers. As a result, work-related messages easily reach them outside of working hours, on weekends, or even during vacations. Therefore, in addition to examining the general impact of technology on well-being, we are also interested in how the use of technology for work purposes influences people’s work itself, their recovery after work, and various aspects of well-being.

How We Study

In our studies, we employ innovative methods that allow data collection from multiple sources. This enables us to create a rich and nuanced picture of how people use technologies and what effects such use has on their lives.

Findings from recent research indicate that the impacts of technology on people’s lives are not the same for everyone. They vary according to different personality factors, as well as over time. Short-term effects may differ from long-term ones. Using EMA (Ecological Momentary Assessment) methods, we can examine in greater detail which individuals experience positive, negative, or no effects of technology use, thereby helping to clarify many pressing questions of contemporary society.

In our current research project, we plan to carry out several stages of data collection. We will begin with at least three pilot studies: one traditional questionnaire-based study aimed at testing measurement instruments and relationships among selected variables, and at least two studies using the EMA method. These EMA studies will focus on testing the data collection application and research design, as well as validating measurement tools and relationships among variables. Subsequently, we will conduct three EMA studies targeting various domains of technology use and their impacts on adults’ well-being—whether digital, physical, or work-related.

In addition to innovative data collection methods, we will also employ diverse analytical approaches that go beyond conventional social science techniques. Alongside advanced statistical tools and procedures for understanding relationships among variables, we will use methods from the field of computer science. One such approach is process analysis, which enables us to map and decode patterns and sequences in communication technology use. Furthermore, we will integrate machine learning techniques, particularly Natural Language Processing (NLP), which will provide valuable context and insight into the content people create and consume on smart devices.

More information about the progress and contributions of this research project can be found on the Research Impact page.

Why Us

Our team, which focuses on the short-term effects of technology, consists of psychologists, media researchers, sociologists, and computer scientists led by Prof. PhDr. David Šmahel, Ph.D. We have extensive experience in studying technologies: in addition to several research projects led by individual team members (such as the FUTURE Project), we are also part of prestigious international research networks EU Kids Online and ySKILLS, both of which focus on the benefits and risks of technology use and on digital skills.

Our team is truly unique because we come from different academic disciplines. This diversity allows us to combine expertise from multiple fields and to approach the study of technology impacts in an innovative and comprehensive way—incorporating, for example, machine learning methods and cutting-edge research approaches such as data collection through mobile applications. Our findings have been featured in major Czech media outlets, including Czech Television, Aktuálně.cz, and Deník N. We regularly publish the results of our research not only in academic journals but also in the form of accessible reports for the public and the media. You can learn more about us in the About Us section.

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Wellbeing

Well-being refers to a person’s overall health and quality of life. It encompasses several dimensions, such as psychological well-being (e.g., mood, depression, stress, anxiety), social well-being (e.g., level of social support and loneliness), physical well-being (e.g., sleep quality, body image, and physical activity), and digital well-being (e.g., benefits of technology use and stress related to the need to be constantly online).

EMA

EMA (Ecological Momentary Assessment), also known as experience sampling or ambulatory assessment, is a method of intensive data collection conducted via smartphones. Participants download an application to their smartphones, which sends them questionnaires several times a day over the course of several days. This allows us to capture the effects of technology use as they occur—within hours or days. Our approach is innovative in that the application can also record smartphone usage, enabling us to study the impacts of smartphone use on well-being much more accurately than through traditional one-time surveys.

Research impact

Research Impact

Existing research on the effects of digital technology use has relied primarily on questionnaires, in which people respond to questions about their technology use or online activities. However, such surveys are not particularly accurate, as they are biased by the limitations of memory recall. As a result, they cannot capture in a detailed and objective way how people actually use technologies or how these technologies affect them.

Our previous research represented a breakthrough in this approach. We used a mobile application to collect objective data from adolescents, allowing us to measure their smartphone use much more precisely and to combine it with frequent assessments of well-being and other variables. This enabled us to answer our then—and still relevant—question, “What is the impact of smartphone use on young people?”, with far greater accuracy.

We are now applying our experience with anonymous mobile behavior data collection and machine-learning-based analysis to a new project that investigates this issue among adults. Focusing on adults is essential, as surprisingly little data exists on the relationship between well-being and technology use in adult populations. At the same time, we know that the effects of technology are not the same for everyone—they vary not only by individual personality but also over time, influenced by numerous other factors. Our EMA-based research design allows us to capture these dynamic factors in real time.         

Promoting Healthier Technology Use

According to a 2020 research report, adolescents today spend twice as much time on mobile devices as they did in 2010. Our research has expanded the understanding of how young people use technologies by focusing on specific activities rather than relying solely on rough estimates of screen time. Data on Czech adolescents show that 70% use social media daily, 75% watch videos on YouTube every day, and 73% use their phones to communicate with family and friends.

To advance research and provide relevant insights that can support safer and healthier technology use, we also need to understand what exactly adults do on their mobile devices. Therefore, we are asking them questions similar to those we previously explored among adolescents:

  • What content do they consume?
  • How do they entertain themselves online?
  • What is the impact on their psychological well-being?
  • What happens when work obligations enter the picture?
  • How does using technology for work—both during and outside working hours—affect people?

Extending the focus of technology use to include the work context is one of the new areas we are addressing in this project. According to the Czech Statistical Office (2025), most Czech employees have remote access to work even during their free time. An expert panel organized by the Irish government and Eurofound (2022) reported that up to 70% of European workers use technology for work, and about 30% of the EU population performs work-related tasks (such as replying to emails or completing assignments) outside official working hours. Communication technologies have thus become virtual bridges between different spheres of life—work, friends, family, and leisure. It is therefore no surprise that technological progress has raised concerns and sparked efforts to protect people’s free time and well-being.

While in some countries digital well-being is being addressed legislatively, for example through the “right to disconnect,” in the Czech Republic the relationship between technology, well-being, and work remains largely unexplored, and discussions on the right to disconnect are only in their early stages. However, the recent pandemic and the resulting reliance on technology for nearly all forms of communication have reignited this debate.

As a research team, we face a major topic for which we are uniquely qualified. We study the impact of technologies in a different and more advanced way, by analyzing real behavior and collecting data multiple times per day to uncover subtle, hard-to-observe patterns. Thanks to the combination of a reliable research application and our extensive experience with this type of study, we are able to collect participants’ experiences safely and accurately over time and process the vast amount of data generated by this approach.

Between 2025 and 2027, we plan to conduct several such studies, and we believe that our findings will be valuable not only for further academic research but also for the general public. After all, most people today work, own a smartphone, or are connected to the internet—so it is very likely that the results of our research will be relevant to you as well.

Data Security

Privacy and data security are extremely important to us. We recognize that our research is based on a mobile application and works with detailed data, which may raise concerns for some people. At the same time, many individuals use a wide range of apps for communication and entertainment every day. These apps often allow developers to collect vast amounts of personal data. Such data are frequently used in non-transparent ways, primarily for marketing purposes such as personalized advertising. Our team takes a clear stance against these practices. Although our application enables us to collect a large amount of authentic data, we handle them transparently, with informed consent, and with the utmost attention to data security. All data are used exclusively for research purposes.

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Who we are

About us

In our interdisciplinary team, researchers from various fields are represented, allowing us to combine expertise from a wide range of disciplines. This enables us to approach the study of technology impacts in an innovative and comprehensive way. We make use of machine learning techniques and apply the latest scientific methods. Our results have been presented in major Czech media outlets, such as Czech Television, Aktuálně.cz, and Deník N. We regularly publish our findings not only in academic journals but also in the form of clear and accessible reports intended for the general public and the media. On this page, you can find information about us as individual researchers and about our collaborations.

Our Partners

  • University of Ostrava – EMA methods
  • University of Hradec Králové – development of the Health React application used for our data collection
  • Czech Academy of Sciences, Institute of Computer Science – advanced statistical processing of EMA data
  • University of Ghent – digital well-being
  • University of Amsterdam – EMA methods in the field of media effects

Team Members

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Prof. PhDr. David Šmahel, Ph.D.

David is a professor at the Faculty of Social Studies and the Faculty of Informatics at Masaryk University and the head of our research package. He has long been engaged in research on children in the context of the opportunities and risks of internet use. He is the co-author of the influential book Digital Youth: The Role of Media in Development, which has been translated into Chinese and Korean. In addition, he is the lead author of the report EU Kids Online 2020: Survey Results from 19 Countries, which maps children’s internet use across 19 European countries. When he is not developing new research projects, he enjoys spending time with his daughter Rebeka or being active—his passions include running, cycling, and cross-country skiing.

prof. Martin Kreidl, Ph.D.

Martin is a professor of sociology at the Faculty of Social Studies. His specialization lies in demography and theories of survey response behavior. In our project, he focuses on methodological issues related to questionnaire completion.

prof. PhDr. Martin Vaculík Ph.D.

Martin focuses on the application of psychology in the workplace. He has long been studying factors that influence work performance. For example, he is the author of a competency model that helps identify good leaders before they actually become ones. The outcome of his project on the sources of psychological capital includes identifying the importance of the quality of relationships with parents and peers during adolescence for the development of psychological capital in adulthood. He is also the co-author of the CPC12-R psychological capital measurement method. Within the EMA team, he focuses on the effects of ICT use after working hours on recovery processes.

Martin enjoys polar expeditions (at –25°C or colder), climbing fairly high mountains (over 5,000 meters), and adventurous road trips across various parts of the world. He also does quite a bit of uphill running.

Mariek Vanden Abeele

Mariek Vanden Abeele is an Associate Professor of Digital Culture at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at Ghent University. In her research, Mariek focuses on digital culture, combining psychological and sociological perspectives on media to better understand the role that digital media use plays in everyday life. Her interests include mobile media use and its problematic forms, its impact on relationships, digital well-being, and the social implications of wearable technologies. Mariek is an active member of the Mobile Communication Interest Group within the International Communication Association (ICA). She is also the Principal Investigator of an ERC 2020 Starting Grant on Digital Well-being. In her project, Mariek draws on her interdisciplinary background to explore individuals’ relationship to being connected anytime and anywhere, using both computational and ethnographic research approaches.

Ine Beyens

Ine Beyens is an Assistant Professor at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) at the University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on the effects of screen media on the emotional, psychological, and social well-being of children and adolescents. Ine is a founding member of the AWeSome project, an interdisciplinary initiative that investigates the impact of social media use on various aspects of adolescent well-being.

Mgr. Tomáš Kratochvíl, Ph.D.

Tomáš holds a PhD in Work Psychology from the Faculty of Social Studies at Masaryk University and works in our team as a postdoctoral researcher. His research focuses on the impact of modern technologies on employees’ health and performance, as well as on potential interventions in these areas. He is also trained in psychotherapy and has his own practice, which allows him to bridge psychological research and its practical applications. In his free time, he enjoys reading and writing fiction, swimming, playing games, and organizing fan events dedicated to various popular works.

Mgr. Michaela Šaradín Lebedíková, PhD.

Michaela holds a PhD in Media Studies and works in our team as a researcher focusing on media effects. She has long been studying the impact of sexually explicit content and sexting on well-being. Within our EMA team, she concentrates primarily on digital well-being and contributes a social science perspective to collaborations with colleagues in the field of machine learning. She is also one of our EMA design experts—she spent three months on a research stay with the AWeSome team at the University of Amsterdam, one of the leading pioneers of EMA design in media and technology studies. She has also lectured on the applications of EMA design, for example at Ghent University in Belgium. In her spare time, she is affectionately devoted to Karel, a robot from the Laboratory of Natural Language Processing, whom she hopes to adopt one day.

RNDr. Martin Macák, Ph.D.

Martin is an Assistant Professor specializing in process-oriented techniques. His work focuses on process mining methods and the visualization of process models. His research has covered areas such as cybersecurity, education, and software engineering. Within our EMA team, he brings a process-oriented perspective to the study of well-being, analyzing event logs generated through the use of digital technologies.Martin also enjoys collaborating with companies on research projects where academic findings can be directly applied in practice. He is currently leading a research collaboration between the university and SAP. In his free time, he enjoys teaching courses at the Faculty of Informatics.

RNDr. Jaromír Plhák, Ph.D.

Jaromír is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Informatics at Masaryk University and a senior member of the informatics division of our team. The research side of his pragmatic nature focuses primarily on modeling and simulation, machine learning, and assistive technologies that support people with disabilities. In a previous EXPRO project, he led the development of an application enabling data collection from adolescents’ mobile phones and is currently conducting experiments with the collected data using machine learning methods. As part of his teaching activities, he lectures on topics related to programming, algorithm design, and social informatics. In his free time, he enjoys spending time with his children, playing board games, and doing sports especially those that involve a ball of any size.

Mgr. et Mgr. Michal Tkaczyk, Ph.D.

Dr. Michał Tkaczyk is a postdoctoral researcher specializing in communication studies. Within the project, his main focus is on the effects of communication technology use on the sleep of adults and adolescents. Among the additional topics he enjoys working on are the impact of ICT on well-being and the challenges of measuring ICT use time through surveys.In the past, he contributed to the successful FUTURE project, which aimed to better understand the influence of technology on adolescents’ well-being.

RNDr. Ondřej Sotolář

Ondřej is a PhD student at the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, and serves in our research team as both a researcher and programmer. He focuses on the design of technologies used within the team for data collection and processing. During his master’s studies, he worked on data anonymization, and his doctoral research explores the application of machine learning and artificial intelligence to human–computer interaction. For more details on his professional background, see his LinkedIn profile. In his free time, Ondřej enjoys spending time with his two children.

Mgr. Jaroslav Sýkora

Jaroslav is a PhD student in Work Psychology at the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University. His doctoral project builds on his master’s thesis, which focused on recovery and the use of technology for work outside regular working hours. He examines the factors that facilitate recovery. Jaroslav also works as a career counselor at the Masaryk University Career Centre and as an occupational psychologist, coach, and trainer for various organizations. He enjoys espresso, Italian cuisine, gardening, and music.

Mgr. Martin Tancoš

Martin Tancoš is a PhD student in Psychology at the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University. His research focuses on the analysis of intensive longitudinal data and objective smartphone use data, employing linear multilevel modeling and structural equation modeling. He also works on developing methods for using reaction time in performance testing. In addition, he is interested in political psychology, the development of cognitive tests, and response processes in questionnaires.

Mgr. Tomáš Vojtíšek

Tom is a PhD student in Work Psychology at the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University. As a junior researcher, he assists with the preparation of materials for data collection and communication with research participants. His doctoral research focuses on the long-term relationships between the use of communication technologies and recovery from work. In his free time, he is active in faculty and university governance, enjoys bouldering, and plays board games.

Bývalí členové

Mgr. Jana Blahošová

Mgr. Jana Blahošová is a former PhD student in Media Studies and Journalism at the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University. In her dissertation, she focuses on excessive internet use among adolescents and its relationships with selected family environment factors, such as the quality of parent–child relationships and parental mediation of media use. Her other research interests include behavioral addictions, particularly technology-related and online addictive behaviors among young people. She also works as an assistant editor for the academic journal Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace. In her free time, she enjoys baking, writing, and practicing yoga, and if she could, she would happily make a living as a professional food taster.

doc. Mgr. Steriani Elavsky, Ph.D.

Steri is a researcher at the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University. Her current research focuses on mobile technologies for improving behavioral health and active aging in the Czech Republic. Within her work, she is interested in health behaviors and their psychological impacts across different populations. Steri is the author of numerous publications in international journals and spent 16 years in the United States, where she earned her PhD (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and worked as an academic (Penn State University, University Park). She is also affiliated with the University of Ostrava, and her broader research interests include health psychology, physical activity, subjective well-being and quality of life, adult development and aging, women’s health, and mind–body therapies such as yoga. In her free time, Steri enjoys gardening, exercising, reading science fiction, and playing outdoors with her children.

doc. RNDr. Aleš Horák, Ph.D.

Aleš Horák has been working for over 20 years as a researcher in the field of artificial intelligence and language technologies, and since 2014 he has served as the Head of the Department of Machine Learning and Data Processingat the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University. His research focuses on semantic analysis, information extraction from text, automatic text style recognition, and the design of specialized systems for building ontologies, lexicographic databases, and electronic dictionaries.He is a co-author of systems used in research and security projects across dozens of institutions worldwide.

JUDr. Pavel Loutocký, Ph.D., BA (Hons)

Pavel is a lawyer working at the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University. He is part of a centre of excellencefocused on issues related to cybercrime, cybersecurity, and the protection of critical information infrastructures. He also serves as a researcher and lecturer at the Institute of Law and Technology at the Faculty of Law, Masaryk University. Within the project, he oversees the legal aspects to ensure that all procedures comply with regulations and protect not only the research participants but also the researchers themselves. In his free time, he enjoys walking with his wife and dog and plays in a gothic rock band.

Mgr. Michal Schejbal

Michal worked at the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, and served as our programmer responsible for technical solutions. Together with Jaromír and Ondřej, he developed the mobile application used for data collection. Among his main responsibilities was ensuring that the application could do everything the rest of the team envisioned while remaining secure and user-friendly for research participants. His current interests include Android and wearable device development, as well as emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence. Michal also enjoys growing chili peppers and testing how much spicy food he can handle.

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