The Relationship Between Online Vigilance and Well-Being in Everday Life: Combining Smartphone Logging with Experience Sampling

Through communication technology, users find themselves constantly connected to others to such an extent that they have developed a mindset of connectedness. This mindset has been defined as online vigilance. Although there is a large body of research on media use and well-being, the question of how online vigilance impacts well-being remains unanswered. In this preregistered study, we combine experience sampling and smartphone logging to address the relation of online vigilance and affective well-being in everyday life. 75 Android users answered eight daily surveys over five days (N = 1615) whilst having their smartphone use logged. Thinking about smartphone-mediated social interactions (i.e., the salience dimension of online vigilance) was negatively related to affective well-being. However, it was far more important whether those thoughts were positive or negative. No other dimension of online vigilance was robustly related to affective well-being. Taken together, our results suggest that online vigilance does not pose a serious threat to affective well-being in everyday life.

借助通信技术，用户发现自己始终与他人保持不断的联系，以至于他们形成了一种连接性的心态。这种心态被定义为在线警觉。尽管关于媒体使用与幸福的研究文献浩如烟海，但关于在线警觉如何影响幸福感的问题尚未得到解答。在本项预先注册的研究中，我们结合了经验抽样和智能手机日志记录，以探讨在线警觉与日常生活中的情感幸福感之间的关系。75名Android用户在五天内（N = 1615）完成了八次每日调查，同时记录了他们的智能手机使用情况。思考通过智能手机进行的社会互动（即在线警觉的显著性维度）与情感幸福感呈负相关。然而，这些想法是积极还是消极则显得尤为重要。在线警觉的任何其他维度与情感幸福感之间均未表现出稳健的关系。综合来看，我们的研究结果暗示，在线警觉在日常生活中的情感幸福感方面并未构成严重威胁。