5 Conclusion

The challenge of designing powerful, always-connected digital devices that support self-control over their use, is important to address. This paper contributes to such efforts on two levels: (i) by providing the first comprehensive functionality analysis of current apps and browser extensions for digital self-control on the Google Play, Chrome Web, and Apple App stores, and (ii) by applying a well-established model of self-regulation to evaluate their design features and provide a mechanistic understanding of the problem they address.

The future to hope for is one in which users develop beneficial habits of technology use and are resilient against predatorial nudging by clickbait advertisers and data harvesters. We hope our review of 367 apps and browser extensions representing natural experiments in designing for digital self-control, and our formulation of a dual systems model to understand them, will help us realise this future.