Staying Informed and Bridging “Social Distance”: Smartphone News Use and Mobile Messaging Behaviors of Flemish Adults during the First Weeks of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The authors explore patterns of smartphone use during the first weeks following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic in Belgium, focusing on citizens’ use of smartphones to consume news and to communicate and interact with others. Unique smartphone tracking data from 2,778 Flemish adults reveal that at the height of the outbreak, people used their smartphone on average 45 minutes (28 percent) more than before the outbreak. The number of smartphone pickups remained fairly stable over this period. This means that on average, users did not turn to their smartphones more frequently but used them longer to access news (54 percent increase), social media apps (72 percent increase), messaging apps (64 percent increase), and the voice call feature (44 percent increase). These smartphone use patterns suggest that smartphones are key instruments that help citizens stay informed, in sync, and in touch with society during times of crisis.

COVID-19 and the 24/7 News Cycle: Does COVID-19 News Exposure Affect Mental Health?

“…How news is produced, disseminated, and consumed today is dramatically different than a few decades ago. The role of changing technology, and the multiple social media platforms (e.g., Twitter, Facebook [live], Instagram) born out of these changes, have led to the constant and immediate dissemination of news (Ohme et al 2020). This evolution necessitates changes in how sociological studies of health approach investigating population health.…”

“…Morgan 2020). The use of mobile devices to follow news and current events was even more pronounced, with estimates suggesting a 215 percent increase in March 2020 compared with March 2019 (Nielsen 2020; Ohme et al 2020).…”

Problematic Smartphone Use during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Its Association with Pandemic-Related and Generalized Beliefs

“…Smartphone technologies have played an essential role in combatting the COVID-19 pandemic by offering a way to disseminate COVID-19 related information, record symptoms, and [ 2 ] trace potentially infected contacts [ 3 ], as well as to communicate, obtain and share information, and bring people together in times of enforced social isolation during the pandemic [ 4 ]. Meanwhile, it is not surprising that researchers observed a significant increase in smartphone use to access social networking, the Internet, and entertainment applications during the pandemic [ 5 , 6 ]. Despite the merits associated with smartphone technologies, researchers have warned that a surge in smartphone use may lead to an increase in problematic smartphone use (PSU) during the COVID-19 pandemic [ 7 ].…”

Do You Get What I Mean?!? The Undesirable Outcomes of (Ab)Using Paralinguistic Cues in Computer-Mediated Communication

“…Digital technology enables people to work away from the office, at least part of the time, and this shift has intensified due to the Covid-19 pandemic ( Bick et al, 2020 ; Kramer and Kramer, 2020 ; Nguyen et al, 2020 ; Ohme et al, 2020 ), expanding to a new extreme the reliance on communication technology and the need to communicate effectively via computer-mediated communication (CMC). Specifically, more and more communication is being conveyed via text-based media, such as emails ( Radicati and Levenstein, 2015 ; Goodman-Deane et al, 2016 ), known to be lean in social cues compared to face-to-face (FTF), video, or voice interactions ( Daft and Lengel, 1986 ).…”