When the smartphone goes offline: A factorial survey of smartphone users' experiences of mobile unavailability

Highlights

• Mobile unavailability is a positive and negative experience.

• Place, duration, reason, and contact attempts influence the perception of unavailability.

• Availability management, FOMO, and conscientiousness are individual predictors.

• Cross-level effects indicate varying effects of situational factors.

• Mobile unavailability at home is perceived ambiguously.

Abstract

Smartphones, with their ubiquitous presence, have become indispensable devices. Considerable research has been conducted on the pros and cons of mobile availability, but comparatively less research exists on different forms of mobile unavailability. Using an online factorial survey on 146 German smartphone users, the situational, usage-related, and personality-related factors influencing the perception of 72 systematically constructed fictitious scenarios of mobile unavailability were studied. Using a multilevel approach, the research revealed that the place, reason and duration of unavailability, and expectation of contact attempts influence situational mobile unavailability. Individual factors such as the significance of mobile availability, the availability expectations of friends, a disposition for FOMO (fear of missing out), and a high level of conscientiousness influence the perception of the unavailability scenarios. Furthermore, three cross-level effects between situational and individual factors are found.

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.