Despite growing evidence linking loneliness with problematic mobile phone use (PMPU), the temporal direction between these constructs remains debated. Drawing on the cognitive-behavioral model of pathological Internet use and the compensatory Internet use theory, loneliness is theorized to increase PMPU as a coping strategy for social isolation, whereas the displacement hypothesis suggests that PMPU may instead serve as an antecedent of loneliness. To resolve this theoretical inconsistency, we examined both variable- and symptom-level associations between loneliness and PMPU using the random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) and cross-lagged panel network analysis (CLPN). A total of 768 adolescents completed three assessments at approximately 6-month intervals over 1 year. The RI-CLPM revealed bidirectional within-person associations: higher loneliness predicted greater subsequent PMPU, and elevated PMPU predicted increased loneliness over time. The CLPN further uncovered the strongest cross-lagged edges were all from loneliness to PMPU symptoms. Additionally, several key nodes in the network were identified. From T1 to T2, PMPU5 ( friends/family complaint ) showed the highest out-EI and PMPU9 ( excessive duration notification ) had the highest in-EI; from T2 to T3, PMPU6 ( unexpected usage duration ) showed the highest out-EI and PMPU4 ( mobile check anxiety ) had the highest in-EI. These findings highlight the importance of integrating variable- and symptom-level approaches to advance theoretical understanding of the dynamic association between loneliness and PMPU and to inform practical interventions that help break this vicious cycle among adolescents.
Mobile media scholarship has extensively theorised textual and visual intimacies, yet sound remains underexamined as a modality through which migrants sustain transnational belonging. This article develops an account of sonic intimacy —forms of connection mediated through voice, music, and acoustic atmosphere via mobile platforms—and argues that recurrent listening practices operate as civic infrastructure in diasporic life. It builds on Malcolm James's analysis of sonic intimacy in Black British diasporic sound cultures and extends Pertierra's concept of discursive intimacy, situating both within mobile sound and mobile messaging research. Drawing on sonic ethnographic research with Sri Lankan migrant communities in Melbourne, including 30 interviews, participant sound recordings, and platform artefact analysis, the article examines listening across political mobilisation, religious ritual, and everyday mobile use. WhatsApp voice messages, YouTube temple archives, and TikTok remixes are shown to sustain recognition, belonging, participation, and audibility—the four dimensions through which listening becomes infrastructural. Cosmopolitan sonic intimacy emerges as an outcome of these practices rather than a competing framework: Migrants from CALD backgrounds cultivate cosmopolitan sensibilities through everyday listening practices rather than elite consumption. The article contributes to mobile media scholarship by demonstrating that sound operates as a primary rather than supplementary modality of platform-mediated intimacy and that attending to it reveals dimensions of mobile life invisible to text-focused analysis.
In blue-collar work, such as construction and landscaping, mobile devices allow for communication across dispersed workplaces while posing risks to worker outcomes, including physical safety. When mobile devices interrupt workers, they are tasked with making rapid decisions about how to respond. This study examines how blue-collar workers experience and navigate interruptions by mobile communication technologies. Based on 46 semi-structured interviews nested in a phone survey of employees of a blue-collar company in the Netherlands, results reveal that when interrupted by their mobile devices, workers engage in a complex negotiation process in which they weigh a myriad of contextual factors and consider different response options. Participants describe three general strategies to approach these negotiations: devising rules to guide their choices, taking preventative measures to limit the choices they need to make, and structurally deprioritizing mobile communication altogether. Ultimately, the study highlights that managing interruptions in high-risk environments constitutes a complex skill, one that demands more scholarly and managerial attention.
This commentary explores what it means for generative artificial intelligence (AI) to become mobile, as interaction shifts from screen-bound querying to AI participation in the flow of everyday situations. Rather than framing this shift in terms of access or use, it approaches mobile AI through situated sense-making, understood here in terms of the constitution of sense through ongoing activities, embodied cues, social coordination, and mobile communication affordances as AI becomes part of the situation. Starting from a caf & eacute; interaction staged in a promotional video for a future AI device, the commentary confronts corporate claims of seamless interaction with theoretical accounts of situated sense-making. Drawing on mobile communication studies and human-machine communication (HMC), it argues that mobile AI requires a specification of sense-making as HMC's central boundary object: not only as mutual interpretation between users and interfaces but also as a process embedded in ongoing activities and interactions. The commentary develops this argument through three interrelated aspects of situated sense-making-coordination, distribution, and stabilization-showing how mobile AI may reshape participation, redistribute epistemic authority, and steer relevance toward either shared problematization or premature closure. It thereby advances an approach to analyzing and designing embodied AI that foregrounds visible coordination, responsive alignment, and stabilization that remains open to collective deliberation.
The widespread adoption of digital platforms and mobile devices has significantly transformed audiovisual storytelling. Short-form mobile microdramas represent not only a new mode of distribution but also a narrative form that reorganizes cinematic time and space. While previous research has primarily focused on platform economies, audience engagement, and algorithmic circulation, the visual-temporal organization of mobile microdramas has received comparatively little attention from the perspective of quantitative film analysis. Addressing this gap, this study investigates how mobile microdramas reorganize cinematic form through temporal compression and spatial narrowing. A quantitative formal analysis was conducted on the first episodes of 10 ReelShort series representing different narrative tropes. The analysis examined average shot length (ASL), editing rhythm, shots per minute, shot-scale distribution, and the use of establishing shots. Shot boundaries were automatically identified using Adobe Premiere Pro's Scene Edit Detection tool, while shot scales and spatial indicators were analysed through qualitative coding. The findings show that an exceptionally short ASL of 2.31 s, together with the predominance of medium shots and the limited use of full/long shots and establishing shots, minimizes spatial exposition while privileging character-centred compositions and producing a dense visual rhythm optimized for smartphone viewing. The results suggest that ReelShort reorganizes cinematic form by simultaneously compressing cinematic time and narrowing cinematic space, extending long-term stylistic tendencies in film history while adapting them to the perceptual and technological conditions of vertically oriented mobile media.
