Situational boundary conditions of digital stress: Goal conflict and autonomy frustration make smartphone use more stressful

Abstract

Mobile connectivity can negatively affect smartphone users by eliciting stress. Past research focused on stress-inducing potentials of smartphone use behaviors and, recently, on the cognitive-motivational engagement with online interactions. However, theoretical perspectives as the mobile connectivity paradox and the IM³UNE model further suggest that digital stress effects may be conditional. A preregistered experience sampling study ( n = 123; 1,427 use episodes) investigated relationships of cognitive-motivational (online vigilance) and behavioral (communication load, media multitasking) smartphone use patterns with perceived stress and introduced two situational boundary conditions (goal conflict, autonomy need dissatisfaction). Results demonstrate that online vigilance can induce stress directly and via increasing communication load. Goal conflict and autonomy need dissatisfaction moderated the influence of online vigilance and media multitasking on stress. Findings are discussed in the context of effect directionality and the need to further investigate boundary conditions in digital well-being research.

Digital social multitasking (DSMT) and digital stress among adolescents: A peer norm perspective

“…As mentioned above, people experience digital stress when they perceive digital demands to undermine the achievement of other goals [ 1 ]. Similarly, users feel more stressed when they sense a conflict between their phone use and another activity (i.e., goal conflict) [ 18 ]. When adolescents feel distracted by DSMT, they likely experience more goal conflict and feel less achieving, leading to higher digital stress.…”

“…When teens perceive negative injunctive norms of DSMT, they likely face a dilemma—while their friends consider DSMT disruptive, dismissive, and disrespectful, teens simultaneously sense a strong expectation for immediate digital response [ 12 , 29 , 40 ], which would be difficult to achieve without DSMT. The two expectations present a goal conflict, which has been found to be associated with higher digital stress [ 18 ] and may be an underlying mechanism for this direct path. Furthermore, when teens’ peers frown upon DSMT, they may call out teens when they multitask and appear distracted.…”

“…Research has also established links between levels of DSMT-adjacent behaviors (e.g., media multitasking) and digital stress [ 16 ], as well as stress-related longitudinal outcomes (e.g., sleep problems [ 17 ]). Although some research suggests that levels of DSMT and media multitasking do not lead to increased digital stress or psychosocial challenges for young and emerging adults [ 6 , 18 ], this may be a different story for younger users, who are not as readily equipped to reallocate their cognitive resources and can be easily distracted when they multitask [ 9 ]. In other words, adolescents may face a higher risk of experiencing depleted coping resources when they multitask.…”

Smartphone-Tracked Digital Markers of Momentary Subjective Stress in College Students: Idiographic Machine Learning Analysis

“…Moreover, research suggests that relations between smartphone app use and mental health differ from person to person [12][13][14][15][16]. Altogether, with respect to the association between smartphone use and mental health, these and other findings [23,24] indicate that smartphone behaviors could be informative about stress, but open questions remain.…”