When the smartphone goes offline: A factorial survey of smartphone users' experiences of mobile unavailability
Introduction
Mobile phones, with their “anywhere and anytime” connection, were a great development for long-distance relationship maintenance, but smartphones, as “mini computers” for the pocket, have increased the functionality of mobile phones further. Smartphones are ubiquitous and can fulfill their users’ communicative, informative, coordinative, social, and entertaining needs (Kang & Jung, 2014, p. 377). Thus, that more and more users feel inseparable from their mobile devices is unsurprising (Lepp et al., 2015, Salehan and Negahban, 2013).
However, smartphones also cause new problems (Lanaj, Johnson, & Barnes, 2014). Their ubiquitous presence makes the boundaries between the world of work and the private sphere disappear (Mellner, 2016, White and Thatcher, 2015). Furthermore it poses traffic risks (Briem and Hedman, 1995, Violanti, 1998), influences sleeping habits (Lanaj et al., 2014, Li et al., 2015) and academic performances (Lepp et al., 2015, Lepp et al., 2014, Samaha and Hawi, 2016), lowers the quality of interpersonal interactions (Przybylski and Weinstein, 2012, Turkle, 2011), and decreases mental health (Lepp et al., 2014, Rosen et al., 2014) and life satisfaction (Lepp et al., 2014). Previous studies focus on compulsive checking habits (Oulasvirta, Rattenbury, Ma, & Raita, 2012) and smartphone addiction (Lee et al., 2014, Lin et al., 2014, Salehan and Negahban, 2013), which goes along with compulsive usage and increased distress (Lee et al., 2014). Distress that is caused by information and communication overload is discussed under the term “technostress” (Chen, 2015, p. 734; Lee et al., 2012, Lee et al., 2014). Various studies mention the term “nomophobia” (King et al., 2013, Tams et al., 2018, Yildrim and Correira, 2015) which King et al. (2013, p.141) defines as “the discomfort or anxiety caused by the non-availability of a mobile phone, PC or any other virtual communication device in individuals who use them habitually”. Nomophobia describes the loss of information access, connectedness, and communication abilities (Tams et al., 2018, p. 1) and often goes along with a kind of dependence on mobile phones or smartphones.
Based on this short research review on the “dark side of smartphone usage” (Lee et al., 2014), the problems of smartphone usage can be summarized in two scenarios: On the one hand, the ubiquitous presence of smartphones can cause such problems as communication and information overload as well as (techno)stress and compulsive—respectively, addictive—usage habits. On the other hand, the absence of smartphones causes fundamental psychological and social problems such as fears, emotional stress, feelings of social isolation, and many more. This study addresses the experiences of unavailability and follows the direction of the nomophobia research without addressing extreme forms of phobic experiences in unavailability situations. The objective is to analyze situational and individual factors that influence how smartphone users experience different situations of mobile unavailability; the pathological forms of smartphone usage or dependence need not be analyzed.
Three research questions should be answered in this paper: RQ1 Which situational factors influence the experience of mobile unavailability? RQ2 Which individual factors influence the experience of mobile unavailability? RQ3 Which individual factors influence the effects of situational factors on the experience of mobile unavailability? (cross-level interactions)
The findings should shed light on the interactions of situational and individual characteristics that foster positive or negative mobile unavailability experiences. Considering such cross-level effects could help to understand why one and the same situation of mobile unavailability is experienced positively by one user but negatively by another one.
Section snippets
Smartphone usage habits and their implications for mobile unavailability
Mobile availability implies active and passive aspects. Active smartphone usage includes calling or texting other people and using the Internet for research, navigation, and other functions. In this case, the functions of the mobile device are available for the user. The passive aspect stands for the possibility to be reached by others via the smartphone (for example, others can send you messages or call you). Hence, the passive form of availability describes the situation when a user becomes
Method and variables
We designed a web-based factorial survey (Jasso, 2006, Rossi and Anderson, 1982), which allows causal explications of the observed judgments (Taylor, 2006, p. 1196) and lead to higher reliability and validity than with more general single-question surveys (Alexander & Becker, 1978). The vignettes varied with respect to four dimensions1
Empirical results
Nine out of ten survey participants rate their smartphone as important or even very important in their everyday life (five-point Likert scale, 1 = not important at all, 5 = very important; mean = 4.24, SD = 0.833). Of the participants, 73% report a high or even very high intensity of smartphone usage (five-point Likert scale, 1 = very low, 5 = very high, mean = 3.92, SD = 0.875). All except two smartphone owners frequently use mobile messaging applications (e.g., WhatsApp), 79% social
Discussion
Whereas previous studies focus on the effects of either individual or situational factors on the experiences of mobile unavailability, we conduct, up to our best knowledge, one of the few projects that analyze these effects simultaneously and consider interactional effects between situational and individual factors. The results emphasize the complexity of the everyday perception of being out of reach, which leads to ambivalent evaluations of mobile unavailability. The systematical variation of
Limitations
Besides the significant findings, some limitations have to be mentioned. First, the small sample size and the nonrandom sampling method have to be named. The evaluations of the vignettes are based on the estimates of 146 smartphone users who are mainly high educated and mostly between 20 and 30 years old. Therefore, the findings cannot be generalized for all smartphone users. Further studies should replicate the identified model with a more heterogeneous and more representative sample. Second,
Conclusion
Besides the mentioned limitations, this study supports the assumption that experiences of mobile unavailability vary among users and depend on situational factors. The findings indicates three main points to better understand the experiences of mobile unavailability that should be re-checked by further studies with more representative samples: First, situational factors such as the place (especially being at home), the reason (especially forgetting the smartphone), a long duration of
Declarations of interest
None.
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