In a digitally connected world, the perceived expectation to always stay available via mobile messenger services places unique demands on users. This paper addresses the question of how and when so-called availability pressure leads to variations in messenger users' well-/ill-being. Drawing on the Integrative Model of Mobile Media Use and Need Experiences, it conceptualizes the satisfaction versus frustration of fundamental needs (autonomy, competence, relatedness) as mediators and the health-promoting personality trait mindfulness as a moderator. This model was tested across a 7-day-long diary study (N = 229) and a 2-factorial online experiment (N = 166). Both pre-registered studies are in line with the model's assumption that availability pressure can lead to specific need experiences, which in turn predict different facets of well-/ill-being. Although we identified limited moderating effects, being mindful (Study 1) and cultivating mindfulness (Study 2) were positively related to need satisfaction and well-being and negatively related to need frustration and ill-being. This highlights the complex consequences of availability pressure and the importance of individual coping mechanisms. Future research should refine theoretical models like the Integrative Model of Mobile Media Use and Need Experiences and explore additional health-promoting personality traits to better understand digital well-being in the era of mobile connectivity.

Many mobile phone usage behaviors and cognitions have become habitual, and many people have developed a strong connectedness to their mobile phones and the internet. Yet, habitualized mobile phone connectedness might evoke stress and counter long-term goals. Mindfulness has shown promise in counteracting destructive (mobile phone) habits. Over the course of three preregistered studies, we investigated the interrelations between mindfulness, four dimensions of mobile phone connectedness, and stress. Our results indicate that more mindful individuals check their mobile phones less automatically, perform less multitasking, have a lower mobile phone attachment, and experience less online vigilance. Self-control is an important mediator in these relationships. Further, mindful individuals experience less stress; however, mobile phone behaviors and cognitions do not mediate this relationship. Moreover, mindfulness-based stress reduction training or mediation apps seem to be powerful tools for cultivating mindfulness, as they promoted an increase in mindfulness and a decrease in the investigated dimensions of mobile phone connectedness and stress. Results are discussed regarding implications for research and practice.

Abstract With the ever‐increasing prevalence of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and their penetration into the professional and private contexts of people of all ages, negative effects of digital communication and permanent connectedness are also coming to the fore, and digital stress is becoming an increasingly important issue in health communication practice and research. We define digital stress as stress elicited by the confrontation or interaction with, use of, or cognitive orientation toward digital ICTs. Resulting from an imbalance between situational demands and available coping resources, digital stress can be triggered by specific digital media use behaviors, cognitive orientations toward them (e.g., online vigilance), and socioemotional challenges (e.g., fear of missing out). Well‐researched digital stressors are, for instance, multitasking and communication overload. Digital stress manifests itself in physiological, affective, or behavioral responses and not only has a negative effect on people's well‐being but also carries the risk for a multitude of further severe negative health outcomes.

Concerns have been expressed that permanent online connectedness might negatively affect media user’s stress levels. Most research has focused on negative effects of specific media usage patterns, such as media multitasking or communication load. In contrast, users’ cognitive orientation toward online content and communication has rarely been investigated. Against this backdrop, we examined whether this cognitive orientation (i.e., online vigilance with its three dimensions salience, reactibility, monitoring) is related to perceived stress at different timescales (person, day, and situation level), while accounting for the effects of multitasking and communication load. Results across three studies showed that, in addition to multitasking (but not communication load), especially the cognitive salience of online communication is positively related to stress. Our findings are discussed regarding mental health implications and the origins of stress.

Parents can influence their children’s problematic mobile phone involvement (PMPI) by engaging in parental mediation activities, such as restrictions or co-use, by being a role model, and by their general and domain-unspecific parenting style that facilitates more or less attachment security of the child. This study tested the associations between these different routes of influence—parental mediation of the mobile phone, parental PMPI, and secure child-parent attachment—with children’s PMPI. Data was acquired from a quota-sample survey with 500 children, between 8 and 14 years of age, and one of their parents. Results point to the importance of open and empathic parent-child-communication, as well as a positive relationship quality, and demonstrate the detrimental effects of parents’ own PMPI on children’s PMPI.

The rise of digital communication brings about dramatic challenges for theories of communication (and social sciences in general), but also opportunities and problems regarding the expansion of empirical methods employed to study human communication and its manifold digital traces. A team of German communication scholars at Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media and at the University of Mainz held an international conference in Hanover with both young and experienced scholars in February 2018 to promote the development of collective, cross-institutional strategies for computational communication science (CCS). The key findings and learnings from the conference are documented in this conference report. We intend to stimulate organizational and collaborative efforts in establishing infrastructures, knowledge bases, standards of best practice, and a spirit of solidarity among interested scholars to push the field's digital-methodological progress and to compensate for different starting conditions that scholars and institutions are facing on their journey into the digital future.

Much of human behavior is influenced by social norms. Although communication represents one important mechanism through which norms are formed and disseminated, the role of communication has not yet received sufficient attention in social norms research. The present paper develops a communication perspective on normative social influences by applying the theory of normative social behavior (TNSB) as a guiding framework. Taking into account recent and significant changes in our media environment, propositions on the role of communication with referent others (online and offline) a) in the building of norms and b) for the moderation of normative social influences on behaviors are stated. We discuss the benefits and limitations of our communication perspective and raise questions that should be considered in future research.

Friend or Foe in the Pocket? - The Role of the Individual, Peergroup and Parents for (dys)functional Mobile Phone Use In order to provide consultative support to parents as well as to children and young people, background knowledge regarding the motives of mobile phone use, functions of usage, comprehension of the attraction of this all-round medium also as knowledge about potential hazards are essential. This study offers empirical results about potentials and risks. The peergroup plays an important role for riskful and problematic mobile phone involvement. Parents function as a role model and the explicit parental mediation practices and their impact on the child are in focus. Data was acquired from a quota-sample survey with 500 children between the age of 8 and 14 years and one of their parents, qualitative interviews (20 children and their parents) and eight peergroup-discussions (52 participants). The present paper illuminates the above mentioned aspects and derives implications for guidance practice.

Smartphones and other mobile devices have fundamentally changed patterns of Internet use in everyday life by making online access constantly available. The present paper offers a theoretical explication and empirical assessment of the concept of online vigilance, referring to users' permanent cognitive orientation towards online content and communication as well as their disposition to exploit these options constantly. Based on four studies, a validated and reliable self-report measure of online vigilance was developed. In combination, the results suggest that the Online Vigilance Scale (OVS) shows a stable factor structure in various contexts and user populations and provides future work in communication, psychology, and other social sciences with a new measure of the individual cognitive orientation towards ubiquitous online communication.

The goal of this chapter is to describe how the POPC environment operates in tandem with personal characteristics to influence people’s exposure to and processing of political information. In describing the political consequences of the POPC phenomenon we take a social-psychological perspective and focus on the individual level (for a more sociological perspective see the chapter by Vromen, Loader, and Xenos, this volume). We sketch the psychological contours of the contemporary “POPC citizen” and outline recent developments in citizens’ use of mobile information and communication technologies (ICTs) for political information, which have consequences for their individual civic competencies as well as democracy at large.

Christoph Klimmt and Dorothee Hefner, Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media, Leonard Reinecke, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, and Diana Rieger and Peter Vorderer, University of Mannheim How does the expectation that we can access online media and services with our mobile devices anytime and anywhere affect our thinking? The present chapter explicates core dimensions of the permanently online and permanently connected mind. First, we outline the components of online vigilance—a state of mind that explains why many people attend to their smartphone so often. Next, we describe a broader set of expectations that many users develop from their close relationship to their smartphone and their personal online sphere. Finally, we derive a research agenda for future communication studies from this explication of “POPC.”

Mediennutzung findet heute mehr als früher im sozialen Raum statt: Erstens können Rezipientinnen und Rezipienten ihre eigenen Mediennutzungspräferenzen über soziale Netzwerkseiten (SNS), wie Facebook oder Twitter, darstellen (Good, 2013; Liu, 2007; Uski & Lampinen, 2016); zweitens können sie auf SNS beobachten, welche Medieninhalte ihre Freundinnen und Freunde gerne lesen, sehen und teilen (Pempek, Yermolayeva, & Calvert, 2009); und drittens können sie über SNS oder Instant Messaging-Dienste, wie WhatsApp, direkt mit ihren Freundinnen und Freunden interagieren (Pempek et al., 2009). Alle drei Spezifika der Medienentwicklung verweisen auf die Bedeutung sozialer Normen (Johnson, 2014): Die Möglichkeit der medialen Sichtbarmachung von Mediennutzungspräferenzen macht diese anfälliger für den Einfluss sozialer Normen (Uski & Lampinen, 2016), die Beobachtung der Mediennutzung von Bezugspersonen beeinflusst die Bildung sozialer Normen (Litt & Stock, 2011; Walther et al., 2010) und die medial vermittelte soziale Interaktion stellt in ihrer massenhaften Verbreitung einen neuen Gegenstand der Mediennutzung dar, der von einer Betrachtung aus sozial-normativer Perspektive profitiert. Angesichts dieser Medienentwicklungen drängt sich die Frage auf, wie soziale Normen und Mediennutzung zusammenhängen und ob soziale Normen für unterschiedliche Arten von Mediennutzung unterschiedlich (stark) wirken. Diese Frage ist umso relevanter, als gängige Mediennutzungstheorien, wie das SESAM1-Modell (Knobloch-Westerwick, 2015), der Uses-and-Gratifications-Ansatz (U&G; Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 1973) oder die Social Cognitive Theory of Media Selection (SCT; LaRose, 2009; LaRose & Eastin, 2004), sozial-normative Einflussfaktoren nur indirekt modellieren. Sie berücksichtigen zwar soziale Konzepte, wie die so-

To understand and explain the high attraction of being digitally connected with relevant others, the concept of “Fear of Missing Out” (FoMO) has re-ceived increasing research attention. It describes “a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent” (Przybylski, Murayama, DeHaan & Gladwell, 2013, p. 1841). In this chapter, we describe theoretically and demonstrate empirically how FoMO influences the use of the mobile phone and internet in early adolescents between 10 and 14 years of age. Our results show that FoMO is an important predictor for a strong social use of the mobile phone and an overly high involvement with it, but it also increases the probability of communicating risky via the mobile phone by posting inappropriate things and participating in mobile phone bullying. Results are discussed in connection with the question what the concept of FoMO actually represents and where this fear might come from.