Persuasive Technologies and Self-awareness: A Discussion of Screen-time Management Applications

Persuasive technologies are interactive systems designed to change and shape users’ behaviours towards specific goals. By discussing the case of screen-time management applications, this paper explores how persuasive systems transform self-awareness and the self’s cognitive architecture. Drawing on the notion of tectonoetic awareness, I will illustrate how artefacts enable the transition from the temporal bounded experience characterizing first-person perspective (noetic awareness) to the ability of reflecting on oneself from a third person and temporally extended perspective (autonoetic awareness). I will argue that persuasive systems make possible new modalities of self-recognition and self-projection while they simultaneously affect the sense of agency by interfering with users’ actions and intentions.