Online Vigilance and Affective Well-being in Everyday Life: Thinking about smartphone-mediated social interactions (i.e., the salience dimension of online vigilance) was negatively related to affective well-being

Johannes, Niklas, Adrian Meier, Leonard Reinecke, Saara Ehlert, Dinda N. Setiawan, Nicole Walasek, Tobias Dienlin, et al. 2019. “The Relationship Between Online Vigilance and Affective Well-being in Everyday Life: Combining Smartphone Logging with Experience Sampling.” PsyArXiv. October 15. doi:10.31234/osf.io/t3wc2

Abstract: Through communication technology, users find themselves constantly connected to others to such an extent that they routinely develop a mindset of connectedness. This mindset has been defined as online vigilance. Although there is a large body of research on media use and well-being, the question of how online vigilance impacts well-being remains unanswered. In this preregistered study, we combine experience sampling and smartphone logging to address the relation of online vigilance and affective well-being in everyday life. Seventy-five Android users answered eight daily surveys over five days (N = 1615) whilst having their smartphone use logged. Thinking about smartphone-mediated social interactions (i.e., the salience dimension of online vigilance) was negatively related to affective well-being. However, it was far more important whether those thoughts were positive or negative. No other dimension of online vigilance was robustly related to affective well-being. Taken together, our results suggest that online vigilance does not pose a serious threat to affective well-being in everyday life.