Mariek M P Vanden Abeele
Biographic Data
| ID | 221140 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mariek M P Vanden Abeele |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mariek M P Vanden |
| FAMILY NAME | Abeele |
| SIGNATURE | ABEELE M M P V |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ghent University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1806-6991 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 53 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 215 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 53 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Disconnection Amid Inequality: An Intersectional Approach to Ethno-Racial Minoritized Young Women’s Digital Media (Non)use
Digital disconnection studies conceptualize disconnection as a deliberate strategy to balance the benefits and drawbacks of digital engagement to improve well-being. However, this field has been criticized for focusing on privileged subjects while overlooking how structural inequalities shape minoritized youths’ (dis)connection practices. Our 15-month ethnographic study addresses this gap by examining how ethno-racial minoritized young women navi…
Connected Yet Cognitively Drained? A Mixed-Methods Study Examining Whether Online Vigilance and Availability Pressure Promote Mental Fatigue
This mixed-methods study investigates whether online vigilance promotes mental fatigue, and whether this effect is greater when under pressure to be available online. Additionally, it examines whether passively sensed smartphone behavior can serve as a digital proxy for online vigilance. Data were collected from 1,315 adult participants, who received 84 experience sampling questionnaires over 14 days, providing 67,762 usable datapoints on individ…
Assessing Belgian adolescents’ negative digital experiences in everyday life: The mundane digital harms scale
There is widespread concern over the harms adolescents experience from digital media use. Yet, existing literature often overlooks mundane digital harms. This study administered a new instrument, the mundane Digital Harms scale (mDHS), to a sample of 865 adolescents to examine (RQ1) their mundane digital harm experiences, and how these associate with their (RQ2) time spent on different digital activities, (RQ3) use of digital disconnection strate…
The ambivalences of digital disconnection for life coaches: Navigating discrete and performative disconnecting in the creator economy
This study examines how life coaches navigate the tension between the authenticity of digital disconnection and the selective, strategic performance of that disconnection on Instagram, either through discrete (unpublicized) or performative (publicly framed) practices. Drawing on interviews with 15 Flemish-Belgian and Dutch life coaches and a qualitative analysis of their Instagram content, the study shows how disconnection emerges as an ongoing n…
Real Men Do the Work!”: How Life Coaches Perform Masculinity in Online and Offline Settings
Life coaches claim to offer men pathways to “authentic” masculinity through self-development. Despite their growing popularity, scholars have paid little attention to how these coaches negotiate and perform masculinity. In addressing this gap, we examine how male-oriented life coaches understand, construct, and perform masculinity—both online and offline. Drawing on a hybrid ethnographic approach—analyzing Instagram content from 15 life coaches a…
Tell me more: Relationships between fear of missing out, distress and flourishing. A study in 21 countries
Home maintainer, guardian or companion? Three commentaries on the implications of domestic AI in the household
Caught between autonomy and control: How Liberian teenagers perceive and navigate parental mediation of their mobile phone use
Mobile phones play a central role in the lives of teenagers living in West Africa, but to date we have limited knowledge of how these teenagers perceive and navigate parental mediation of their phone use. This is unfortunate because such knowledge could inform about the interplay between culture, parenting, and children’s media use across cultures. To broaden our understanding of parental mediation in West Africa, this study interviewed 37 Liberi…
Tapping into feelings: An experience sampling study examining the dynamics of smartphone-based emotion regulation and negative affect
This study examines digital emotion regulation as a dynamic process, involving both processes of media selection and media effects. Using a large intensive-longitudinal data set with more than 50,000 experience sampling data points gathered from over 1,000 adults, we investigated cross-lagged associations between negative affect and two smartphone-based strategies for regulating negative emotions, namely emotion expression and avoidance. Results …
Theorizing dis/connection: A mutual invitation to mobile media and digital disconnection scholars
Mobile connectivity fosters a 24/7 lifestyle that both benefits and burdens individuals. Digital well-being has emerged as a concept describing how persons balance these benefits and burdens. The concept of digital disconnection describes how people set limits to connectivity. Both concepts are currently studied in two fields of research, each dominated by different strands of theories. One strand is developing in mobile media studies: It uses th…
Always On, Always Rushed For Time? Exploring Momentary Associations Between Passively Sensed Smartphone Use, Feeling Rushed, and Perceived Task Juggling
This mixed-methods study combines experience sampling and smartphone log data to explore momentary associations between passively sensed smartphone use, feeling rushed, and perceived task juggling in daily life. Using data from 774 adults, we analyze how four use features (frequency, duration, fragmentation, and notifications received) of four mobile app categories (email, social media, chat, and work communication) affect how rushed people feel,…
The quality of face-to-face and digitally mediated social interactions: Two experience sampling studies exploring the moderating role of physical location, interaction partner familiarity, and interac…
This study examines how communication modality influences social interaction quality and its contingency on three other situational characteristics: physical location, partner familiarity, and interaction purpose. Data from two experience sampling studies including 385 Spanish emerging adults and 10,203 social interaction reports revealed that compared to face-to-face interactions, phone calls were rated higher, video calls showed no significant …
Who cares about digital disconnection? Exploring commodified digital disconnection discourse through a relational lens
Digital disconnection has risen as a new and necessary act of care that individuals perform to counter the burdens associated with 24/7 connectivity. Resources to perform such caring tasks, however, are known to be unequally distributed. Leaning on feminist theory and digital disconnection studies, this study explores whether this unequal distribution also extends to the realm of digital disconnection by examining who is portrayed to care about d…
Lonely online: A social model of digital media addiction: A study in 21 countries
Digital media addiction limits face-to-face communication, which can have negative effects on the subjective wellbeing of individuals. However, the effect of digital media addiction on subjective wellbeing has not been adequately explored, and it is recommended in the literature that the role of mediating variables related to social life should be investigated. These include loneliness and satisfaction with relationships. The current study invest…
A dyadic multimethod study of “partner phubbing”, smartphone conflict, and relationship quality in opposite-sex couples from Belgium
Existing research indicates that ‘partner phubbing’ is associated with heightened conflict and lower relationship satisfaction. However, previous studies have relied on cross-sectional designs involving subjective self-reports of only one partner. In this study, the main hypothesis entailed that the link between partner phubbing and relationship quality will be mediated by conflict over smartphone use. We utilized experience sampling (ESM) with o…
Commentary: Technoference or parental phubbing? A call for greater conceptual and operational clarity of parental smartphone use around children
Recent years have seen a widespread integration of technology into the daily lives of families. Psychological science has recently started to focus on the use of smartphones by parents while they are engaged in parenting activities, a behavior known under the terms “phubbing,” “technoference,” “parental screen distraction,” and various other terms. We argue that understanding the real impact of co‐present smartphone use by parents is inhibited by…
Measurement invariance of the Facebook intrusion questionnaire across 25 countries
Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites. However, Facebook intrusion or addiction is a growing concern as it involves an excessive attachment to Facebook, which disrupts daily functioning. To date, few studies have examined whether cross‐cultural differences in the measurement of Facebook addiction exist. The aim of this study was to investigate the cross‐cultural validity and measurement invariance of the Facebook Intrusion Q…
Unburdening the (Dis)Connected Individual? A Digital Disconnection Policy Paradox in Flanders (Belgium)
The concept of digital disconnection, which refers to limiting digital media use for the sake of one’s well-being, has gained prominence in scholarly and public debates. Compared to a burgeoning digital disconnection industry that commodifies individuals’ struggles with constant connectivity, the development of evidence-based disconnection policies and regulations that support individuals to maintain digital well-being lags behind. The absence of…
Measuring digital well-being in everyday life among Slovenian adolescents: The Perceived Digital Well-Being in Adolescence Scale
Previous research has mostly correlated screen time with adolescents’ social, cognitive, and emotional well-being outcomes, while overlooking adolescents’ subjective experiences of smartphone use. The present research filled this gap by developing and validating the Perceived Digital Well-Being in Adolescence Scale (PDWBA). This semantic differential scale was developed by conducting a literature review and five cognitive interviews with Slovenia…
Unlock a better life: "Here's how!": A critical inquiry into how life coaches gain capital and shape legitimacy using Instagram's affordances
Instagram has become a primary platform via which life coaches establish a relationship with potential clients and advertise their professional services. In this study, we draw from Bourdieu’s work on taste and capital to unravel how life coaches capitalize on the affordances of Instagram to generate legitimacy and credibility for their profession. Drawing from a one-month observation of 1,650 posts collected from 20 Instagram profiles of life co…
Why, how, when, and for whom does digital disconnection work? A process-based framework of digital disconnection
Digital disconnection has emerged as a concept describing the actions people take to limit their digital connectivity to enhance their well-being. To date, evidence on its effectiveness is mixed, leading to calls for greater consideration of why, how, when, and for whom digital disconnection works. This article responds to these calls, presenting a framework that differentiates four key harms that contribute to experiences of digital ill-being (t…
Digital media as ambiguous goods: Examining the digital well-being experiences and disconnection practices of Belgian adults
Drawing from a cross-sectional survey ( N = 1000), this study examines (1) the extent to which Belgian adults experience digital well-being (i.e. perceive agency over and functional support from the use of digital media), (2) which digital disconnection strategies they use to limit connectivity, (3) how their use of these strategies relates to their digital well-being, and (4) whether different user groups can be identified in terms of digital we…
From bliss to burden: An ethnographic inquiry into how social, material and individual obstacles to digital well-being shape everyday life
Drawing from a two-year ethnography with sixteen adults in Flanders and Brussels, Belgium, this study disentangles the social, material, and individual obstacles experienced in day-to-day life that hinder and foster digital well-being. Findings show how these obstacles are interrelated, laying bare the tensions that cut across social relations, digital devices, and spaces. Moreover, (gendered) responsibilities and social relations impact whether …
Predicting Teens' Privacy Management and Attitude Toward Data Protection on Social Media
This study contributes to ongoing debates on the protection of teens' privacy on social media. While ample research is focused on teens' privacy management, less is known about their attitude toward data protection. Drawing from cross-sectional survey data, this study examines whether predictors of privacy management, namely privacy literacy, privacy concern, and perceptions of data control, also predict teens' attitude toward data protection. St…
Psychological perspectives on mobile media: A flyover review
Psychology-infused research has always been a central section within the literature on mobile media and communication, highlighting the diverse emotional, cognitive, social, and personality processes that can interact with mobile behavior.While past work on the psychology of media
Digital Wellbeing as a Dynamic Construct
Mobile media support our autonomy by connecting us to persons, content and services independently of time and place constraints. At the same time, they challenge our autonomy: We face new struggles, decisions, and pressure in relation to whether, when and where we connect and disconnect. Digital wellbeing is a new concept that refers to the (lack) of balance that we may experience in relation to mobile connectivity. This article develops a theore…
Mobile Media and Social Space: How Anytime, Anyplace Connectivity Structures Everyday Life
Using Giddens’ (1984) structuration theory we examine how social structures in mobile communication technologies shape the everyday life of individuals, thereby re-shaping power dynamics that underlie the social organization of society. We argue that the anytime, anyplace connectivity afforded by mobile communication technologies structures society by imposing a network, social and personal logic. We discuss how each logic both reproduces and cha…
Mobile youth culture: A conceptual development
The concept of “mobile youth culture” is frequently used in the field of adolescent mobile phone research to refer to the distinctive ways in which youths around the world embed the mobile phone in their everyday lives. Little attention, however, has been devoted to its theoretical foundations. Drawing from youth culture theory and new (mobile) media theories, this article conceptually develops mobile youth culture by (a) describing the commonali…
Media addictions as Apparatgeist: What discourse on TV and smartphone addiction reveals about society
Disconnection presents itself as a modern answer to problems of media addiction and overuse. But, is it really novel? Through a thematic analysis of Dutch and American newspaper articles spanning several decades, this study examines public news discourses on TV and smartphone addiction and their imagined solutions. The analysis reveals Apparatgeist: While there are parallels stemming from similar affordances, the discourse surrounding each afflic…
Staying Informed and Bridging 'Social Distance: Smartphone News Use and Mobile Messaging Behaviors of Flemish Adults during the First Weeks of the Covid-19 Pandemic
The authors explore patterns of smartphone use during the first weeks following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic in Belgium, focusing on citizens' use of smartphones to consume news and to communicate and interact with others. Unique smartphone tracking data from 2,778 Flemish adults reveal that at the height of the outbreak, people used their smartphone on average 45 minutes (28 percent) more than before the outbreak. The nu…
Personal, editable, and always accessible: An affordance approach to the relationship between adolescents’ mobile messaging behavior and their friendship quality
This study takes a perceived affordance approach to explain how differences in teenagers’ mobile messaging behavior associate with indicators of friendship maintenance behavior. Based on a survey among 1943 teenagers, a structural equation model was tested in which their appreciation of three main affordances of mobile messaging predicted the companionship and support that they derive from their friends through their instrumental and expressive m…
Why, how, when, and for whom does digital disconnection work? A process-based framework of digital disconnection
Digital disconnection has emerged as a concept describing the actions people take to limit their digital connectivity to enhance their well-being. To date, evidence on its effectiveness is mixed, leading to calls for greater consideration of why, how, when, and for whom digital disconnection works. This article responds to these calls, presenting a framework that differentiates four key harms that contribute to experiences of digital ill-being (t…
In-between child’s play and teenage pop culture: Tweens, TikTok & privacy
TikTok’s popularity ignites anxieties about youths’ privacy on the short-video sharing social media platform. This is especially true for 8–12-year-old ‘tweens’. This study draws from in-depth interviews with tweens and their parents to explore perceptions of tweenhood, TikTok and privacy. In our investigation, we move beyond a developmental framework on childhood by taking into account how life stage categories are socio-culturally constructed. …
Mobile lifestyles: Conceptualizing heterogeneity in mobile youth culture
Adolescents’ characteristic understanding and use of mobile phones have led observers to speak of a “mobile youth culture.” This article explores whether we can differentiate lifestyles within mobile youth culture. We construct a user typology of Flemish adolescent mobile phone users based on mobile phone gratifications. Eight gratifications were identified. Using these as segmentation variables, a cluster analysis differentiated a devoted ( N = …
Who cares about digital disconnection? Exploring commodified digital disconnection discourse through a relational lens
Digital disconnection has risen as a new and necessary act of care that individuals perform to counter the burdens associated with 24/7 connectivity. Resources to perform such caring tasks, however, are known to be unequally distributed. Leaning on feminist theory and digital disconnection studies, this study explores whether this unequal distribution also extends to the realm of digital disconnection by examining who is portrayed to care about d…
From bliss to burden: An ethnographic inquiry into how social, material and individual obstacles to digital well-being shape everyday life
Drawing from a two-year ethnography with sixteen adults in Flanders and Brussels, Belgium, this study disentangles the social, material, and individual obstacles experienced in day-to-day life that hinder and foster digital well-being. Findings show how these obstacles are interrelated, laying bare the tensions that cut across social relations, digital devices, and spaces. Moreover, (gendered) responsibilities and social relations impact whether …
Does mindless scrolling hamper well-being? Combining ESM and log-data to examine the link between mindless scrolling, goal conflict, guilt, and daily well-being
This manuscript presents findings from a preregistered mixed-method study involving 67,762 ecological momentary assessments and behavioral smartphone observations from 1,315 adults. The study investigates (a) momentary associations between mindless scrolling, goal conflict, and guilt over smartphone use, and (b) whether guilt experiences during the day culminate into lower well-being. Results indicate that individuals experienced more guilt over …
Digital media as ambiguous goods: Examining the digital well-being experiences and disconnection practices of Belgian adults
Drawing from a cross-sectional survey ( N = 1000), this study examines (1) the extent to which Belgian adults experience digital well-being (i.e. perceive agency over and functional support from the use of digital media), (2) which digital disconnection strategies they use to limit connectivity, (3) how their use of these strategies relates to their digital well-being, and (4) whether different user groups can be identified in terms of digital we…
Digital well-being in an age of mobile connectivity: An introduction to the Special Issue
Although the ubiquitous connectivity afforded by mobile media brings benefits to people’s work, social, and leisure lives, these benefits are sometimes overshadowed by the burdens of 24/7 connectivity, which challenge the well-being of individuals and society. Digital well-being is an emerging concept that refers to how people experience these benefits and burdens. This Special Issue brings together five articles that push the boundaries of digit…
The Impact of Facebook Use on Micro-Level Social Capital: A Synthesis
The relationship between Facebook use and micro-level social capital has received substantial scholarly attention over the past decade. This attention has resulted in a large body of empirical work that gives insight into the nature of Facebook as a social networking site and how it influences the social benefits that people gather from having social relationships. Although the extant research provides a solid basis for future research into this …
Measuring mobile phone use: Gender, age and real usage level in relation to the accuracy and validity of self-reported mobile phone use
This article reports the results of a mobile phone use validation survey in which we compared self-reported mobile phone use to network provider data, and examined the observed discrepancies between both data sources in a convenience sample of 466 Flemish mobile phone users (18–65 years). The results showed significant discrepancies between self-reported and behavioral mobile phone use, particularly for the number and duration of mobile calls. Li…
An actor-partner model of partner phubbing, mobile phone conflict, and relationship satisfaction between romantic partners in Liberia
Using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model, this study investigates among Liberian couples whether partner phubbing predicts relationship satisfaction, both directly and indirectly via mobile phone conflict. Moreover, this study examines whether phubbing by men is less likely to lead to conflict than that by women given the differential power relations and income distributions in Liberian romantic couples. Using data from married, cohabiting, …
Adolescents' school experience and the importance of having a "cool" mobile phone: Conformity, compensation and resistance
The quality of face-to-face and digitally mediated social interactions: Two experience sampling studies exploring the moderating role of physical location, interaction partner familiarity, and interac…
This study examines how communication modality influences social interaction quality and its contingency on three other situational characteristics: physical location, partner familiarity, and interaction purpose. Data from two experience sampling studies including 385 Spanish emerging adults and 10,203 social interaction reports revealed that compared to face-to-face interactions, phone calls were rated higher, video calls showed no significant …
Does attachment style moderate the effect of computer‐mediated versus face‐to‐face conflict discussions
Successful conflict resolution is important in romantic relationships. With the advent of computer‐mediated communication (CMC), partners can resolve conflict using CMC. But is CMC as effective as face‐to‐face communication for conflict resolution? And does the effectiveness depend on attachment style? We asked 100 romantic couples to discuss a conflict topic and randomly assigned them to do so face‐to‐face or via CMC. Levels of distress, anger, …
I am not human without my phone”: How the socio-cultural realities of Liberia shape Liberian mobile youth culture
Mobile youth culture (MYC) is a concept that refers to the distinctive ways in which young people adopt and use mobile phones. However, most studies on MYC are situated in the Global North, where the lived realities of teenagers are different from teenagers in the Global South. Through an investigation of how MYC manifests in Liberia, this article adds to the growing literature on mobile communication in the Global South. By doing so, the study r…
Does parental smartphone use predict parents’ perceptions of family life? An examination of momentary associations between parental smartphone use, parental experiences of quality time, and parental p…
This article reports the findings of a multi-method study that explored whether frequency and duration of parental smartphone use in the presence of children is associated with parents’ perceptions of quality time and child restlessness, an indicator of difficult child behavior. Additionally, the study explored whether parental perceptions of technoference, respectively time displacement, mediate the association between smartphone use measures - …
Networked gift-giving: Ethno-religious minority youths’ negotiation of status and social ties in a society of distrust
The reciprocal exchanges of messages, likes, and pictures on social media are typical expressions of mobile youth culture. After all, it is well-established that young people’s disclosure practices support their efforts to maintain relationships, gain autonomy, and, by large, consolidate a place in the world. What is often missing, however, is an exploration of how the specific socio-cultural contexts of ethno-religious minority youths shape and …
Caught in the moment: Are there person-specific associations between momentary procrastination and passively measured smartphone use
Procrastination is an increasingly prevalent phenomenon. Although research suggests smartphones might be involved, little is known about the momentary association between different patterns of smartphone use and procrastination. In a preregistered study, 221 students ( M age = 20, 55% female) self-reported procrastination five times a day for 30 days (i.e., experience sampling method) while their smartphone use was continuously monitored (i.e., p…
New Life, Old Friends: A Cross-cultural Comparison of the Use of Communication Technologies in the Social Life of College Freshmen
Communication technologies make it possible for college freshmen to maintain their pre-college relationships, while at the same time building new relationships on campus. For American freshmen the transition to college is generally considered as a major change that involves distancing oneself from family and pre-college friends, while for Flemish freshmen the transition to college appears to be a more gradual process. Consequently, American fresh…
New Life, Old Friends: A Cross-cultural Comparison of the Use of Communication Technologies in the Social Life of College Freshmen
Communication technologies make it possible for college freshmen to maintain their pre-college relationships, while at the same time building new relationships on campus. For American freshmen the transition to college is generally considered as a major change that involves distancing oneself from family and pre-college friends, while for Flemish freshmen the transition to college appears to be a more gradual process. Consequently, American fresh…
Measuring mobile phone use: Gender, age and real usage level in relation to the accuracy and validity of self-reported mobile phone use
This article reports the results of a mobile phone use validation survey in which we compared self-reported mobile phone use to network provider data, and examined the observed discrepancies between both data sources in a convenience sample of 466 Flemish mobile phone users (18–65 years). The results showed significant discrepancies between self-reported and behavioral mobile phone use, particularly for the number and duration of mobile calls. Li…
Adolescents' school experience and the importance of having a "cool" mobile phone: Conformity, compensation and resistance
Sexting, Mobile Porn Use, and Peer Group Dynamics: Boys' and Girls' Self-Perceived Popularity, Need for Popularity, and Perceived Peer Pressure
There is considerable concern about adolescents producing, consuming, and distributing sexual materials via mobile phone communication. The purpose of this study was to examine key aspects of peer influence and the peer context in relation to two such practices: sexting and mobile porn use. The results of a high-school survey study (N = 1,943) revealed that 6% of Flemish teens (11–20 years of age) have sent a sext, while 9% use mobile porn. Teens…
Mobile lifestyles: Conceptualizing heterogeneity in mobile youth culture
Adolescents’ characteristic understanding and use of mobile phones have led observers to speak of a “mobile youth culture.” This article explores whether we can differentiate lifestyles within mobile youth culture. We construct a user typology of Flemish adolescent mobile phone users based on mobile phone gratifications. Eight gratifications were identified. Using these as segmentation variables, a cluster analysis differentiated a devoted ( N = …
The Impact of Facebook Use on Micro-Level Social Capital: A Synthesis
The relationship between Facebook use and micro-level social capital has received substantial scholarly attention over the past decade. This attention has resulted in a large body of empirical work that gives insight into the nature of Facebook as a social networking site and how it influences the social benefits that people gather from having social relationships. Although the extant research provides a solid basis for future research into this …
Mobile youth culture: A conceptual development
The concept of “mobile youth culture” is frequently used in the field of adolescent mobile phone research to refer to the distinctive ways in which youths around the world embed the mobile phone in their everyday lives. Little attention, however, has been devoted to its theoretical foundations. Drawing from youth culture theory and new (mobile) media theories, this article conceptually develops mobile youth culture by (a) describing the commonali…
The effect of mobile messaging during a conversation on impression formation and interaction quality
This paper presents two experimental studies investigating the impact of mobile messaging during an offline conversation on relational outcomes. A first study examined the impact on impression formation. A 3 × 1 experiment revealed that phone users were perceived as significantly less polite and attentive, and that self-initiated messaging behavior led to more negative impression formation than messaging behavior in response to a notification. A …
Peer influence as a predictor of producing and distributing hurtful images of peers and teachers among Flemish adolescents
This study examines whether self-perceived popularity, need for popularity, and peer pressure explain teenagers’ use of the mobile phone to make and distribute hurtful pictures and videos of peers and teachers. A large-scale quantitative survey study among 1787 Flemish high school pupils in 2010 revealed that, in the six months prior to the study, 25% of adolescents had made a picture/video of a peer who was being ridiculed, 8% of a peer who was …
Personal, editable, and always accessible: An affordance approach to the relationship between adolescents’ mobile messaging behavior and their friendship quality
This study takes a perceived affordance approach to explain how differences in teenagers’ mobile messaging behavior associate with indicators of friendship maintenance behavior. Based on a survey among 1943 teenagers, a structural equation model was tested in which their appreciation of three main affordances of mobile messaging predicted the companionship and support that they derive from their friends through their instrumental and expressive m…
Fear of Missing Out as a Predictor of Problematic Social Media Use and Phubbing Behavior among Flemish Adolescents
Fear-of-missing-out (FOMO) refers to feelings of anxiety that arise from the realization that you may be missing out on rewarding experiences that others are having. FOMO can be identified as an intra-personal trait that drives people to stay up to date of what other people are doing, among others on social media platforms. Drawing from the findings of a large-scale survey study among 2663 Flemish teenagers, this study explores the relationships …
Mobile Media and Social Space: How Anytime, Anyplace Connectivity Structures Everyday Life
Using Giddens’ (1984) structuration theory we examine how social structures in mobile communication technologies shape the everyday life of individuals, thereby re-shaping power dynamics that underlie the social organization of society. We argue that the anytime, anyplace connectivity afforded by mobile communication technologies structures society by imposing a network, social and personal logic. We discuss how each logic both reproduces and cha…
Phubbing behavior in conversations and its relation to perceived conversation intimacy and distraction: An exploratory observation study
Are Parents Less Responsive to Young Children When They Are on Their Phones? A Systematic Naturalistic Observation Study
This study examined whether parents are less responsive to their young children (0-5) when they use a phone. We systematically observed 53 parent-child dyads in consultation bureau waiting rooms and playgrounds. Twenty-three parents used their phone at least once during the observation. Across the dyads, we observed parent and child behavior during a total of 1,038 ten-second intervals. Of these intervals, 641 contained a bid for attention from t…
Digital Wellbeing as a Dynamic Construct
Mobile media support our autonomy by connecting us to persons, content and services independently of time and place constraints. At the same time, they challenge our autonomy: We face new struggles, decisions, and pressure in relation to whether, when and where we connect and disconnect. Digital wellbeing is a new concept that refers to the (lack) of balance that we may experience in relation to mobile connectivity. This article develops a theore…
Does attachment style moderate the effect of computer‐mediated versus face‐to‐face conflict discussions
Successful conflict resolution is important in romantic relationships. With the advent of computer‐mediated communication (CMC), partners can resolve conflict using CMC. But is CMC as effective as face‐to‐face communication for conflict resolution? And does the effectiveness depend on attachment style? We asked 100 romantic couples to discuss a conflict topic and randomly assigned them to do so face‐to‐face or via CMC. Levels of distress, anger, …
Staying Informed and Bridging 'Social Distance: Smartphone News Use and Mobile Messaging Behaviors of Flemish Adults during the First Weeks of the Covid-19 Pandemic
The authors explore patterns of smartphone use during the first weeks following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic in Belgium, focusing on citizens' use of smartphones to consume news and to communicate and interact with others. Unique smartphone tracking data from 2,778 Flemish adults reveal that at the height of the outbreak, people used their smartphone on average 45 minutes (28 percent) more than before the outbreak. The nu…
Measurement invariance of the Phubbing Scale across 20 countries
Mobile phone addiction is a robust phenomenon observed throughout the world. The social aspect of mobile phone use is crucial; therefore, phubbing is a part of the mobile phone addiction phenomenon. Phubbing is defined as ignoring an interlocutor by glancing at one's mobile phone during a face‐to‐face conversation. The main aim of this study was to investigate how the Phubbing Scale (containing 10 items) might vary across countries, and between g…
Caught in the moment: Are there person-specific associations between momentary procrastination and passively measured smartphone use
Procrastination is an increasingly prevalent phenomenon. Although research suggests smartphones might be involved, little is known about the momentary association between different patterns of smartphone use and procrastination. In a preregistered study, 221 students ( M age = 20, 55% female) self-reported procrastination five times a day for 30 days (i.e., experience sampling method) while their smartphone use was continuously monitored (i.e., p…
In-between child’s play and teenage pop culture: Tweens, TikTok & privacy
TikTok’s popularity ignites anxieties about youths’ privacy on the short-video sharing social media platform. This is especially true for 8–12-year-old ‘tweens’. This study draws from in-depth interviews with tweens and their parents to explore perceptions of tweenhood, TikTok and privacy. In our investigation, we move beyond a developmental framework on childhood by taking into account how life stage categories are socio-culturally constructed. …
Media addictions as Apparatgeist: What discourse on TV and smartphone addiction reveals about society
Disconnection presents itself as a modern answer to problems of media addiction and overuse. But, is it really novel? Through a thematic analysis of Dutch and American newspaper articles spanning several decades, this study examines public news discourses on TV and smartphone addiction and their imagined solutions. The analysis reveals Apparatgeist: While there are parallels stemming from similar affordances, the discourse surrounding each afflic…
Does parental smartphone use predict parents’ perceptions of family life? An examination of momentary associations between parental smartphone use, parental experiences of quality time, and parental p…
This article reports the findings of a multi-method study that explored whether frequency and duration of parental smartphone use in the presence of children is associated with parents’ perceptions of quality time and child restlessness, an indicator of difficult child behavior. Additionally, the study explored whether parental perceptions of technoference, respectively time displacement, mediate the association between smartphone use measures - …
Digital well-being in an age of mobile connectivity: An introduction to the Special Issue
Although the ubiquitous connectivity afforded by mobile media brings benefits to people’s work, social, and leisure lives, these benefits are sometimes overshadowed by the burdens of 24/7 connectivity, which challenge the well-being of individuals and society. Digital well-being is an emerging concept that refers to how people experience these benefits and burdens. This Special Issue brings together five articles that push the boundaries of digit…
Networked gift-giving: Ethno-religious minority youths’ negotiation of status and social ties in a society of distrust
The reciprocal exchanges of messages, likes, and pictures on social media are typical expressions of mobile youth culture. After all, it is well-established that young people’s disclosure practices support their efforts to maintain relationships, gain autonomy, and, by large, consolidate a place in the world. What is often missing, however, is an exploration of how the specific socio-cultural contexts of ethno-religious minority youths shape and …
Predicting Teens' Privacy Management and Attitude Toward Data Protection on Social Media
This study contributes to ongoing debates on the protection of teens' privacy on social media. While ample research is focused on teens' privacy management, less is known about their attitude toward data protection. Drawing from cross-sectional survey data, this study examines whether predictors of privacy management, namely privacy literacy, privacy concern, and perceptions of data control, also predict teens' attitude toward data protection. St…
Impact of Technology on Adolescents (43 works) · Psychology (43 works) · Social Psychology (29 works) · Computer Science (28 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Political science (19 works) · Social Media and Politics (19 works) · Child Development and Digital Technology (16 works) · Internet privacy (14 works) · Social Psychology (14 works)