Poster #104 - Examining the Bidirectional Momentary Links Between Adolescents’ Objectively-Measured Smartphone Use and Momentary Affect

• In Event: Poster Session 18

Abstract

Introduction: Adolescence is a critical period in development where peer relations increase in complexity and social saliency. As such, adolescents use digital media to foster social and emotional connections, exchange information, and explore new ideas. Accordingly, in 2021, adolescents engaged with digital media for almost 8 hours and 40 minutes on average every day. Within the typical day, adolescents exchange an average of 72.3 text message and 3.7 phone calls, suggesting that digital media and specifically, smartphones are critical in understanding adolescent functioning. As most research on adolescent digital media use relies upon cross-sectional, retrospective, self-reports of smartphone screen time, our study is among the first to integrate objective measures of adolescent smartphone use on the hour-by-hour level with momentary assessments of affect.
Methods: The present study examined how adolescent smartphone use, specifically screen time, pickups, and notifications, measured at the hourly-level, were directionally and bidirectionally associated with momentary positive and negative affect. We also explored how the ratios of these specific behaviors (i.e., pickups to notifications, screen time minutes per pickup, notifications per minute of screen time) were associated with affect. For 14-days, a sample of racially-diverse adolescents (N = 70; Mage = 15; 60% girls) reported their momentary affect via ecological momentary assessments, three times a day (morning, afternoon, evening) and during the evening survey, adolescents uploaded screenshots of their Apple iOS output reflecting the hour-by-hour breakdown of their smartphone use (i.e., minutes of screen time, pickups, notifications).
Results: All multi-level associations are shown in Table 1. No within- or between-person associations between screen time and affect were found indicating that screen time alone was a poor predictor of adolescent affect. We did find, however, that more smartphone pickups compared to the average hour were associated with and predicted increased positive affect. Moreover, in hours when adolescents reported higher than average positive affect, they had more pickups in the following hour, suggesting a bidirectional association between smartphone pickups and positive affect. Additionally, hours when adolescents had more pickups in relation to their notifications were associated with increased positive affect in the following hour. Conversely, in hours when adolescents had longer durations of screen time per smartphone pickup were associated with decreased positive affect in the same hour. Finally, hours when adolescents had more notifications per minute were associated with increased negative affect in the same hour.
Conclusion: These findings underscore that adolescents’ overall screen time is not a strong indicator of their positive or negative mood. Instead, these findings demonstrate that adolescents’ smartphone behavior, including total pickups and notifications, is predictive of momentary affect, and affect also may predict smartphone behavior. Future studies should continue improving methodological complexity by increasing the temporal specificity smartphone use and incorporating momentary designs to understand the immediate effects of different types of smartphone content and experiences.

Authors

• Shedrick Lamar Garrett, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Presenting Author

• Sarah C Albani, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Kaitlyn Burnell, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Mitchell J Prinstein, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Eva H Telzer, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill