“How Come You Don’t Call Me?” Smartphone Communication App Usage as an Indicator of Loneliness and Social Well-Being across the Adult Lifespan during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Britta Wetzel, Rüdiger Pryss, Harald Baumeister, Johanna-Sophie Edler, Ana Sofia Oliveira Gonçalves and Caroline Cohrdes
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Britta Wetzel: Mental Health Research Unit, Department of Epidemiology and Health Monitoring, Robert Koch Institute, 12101 Berlin, Germany
Rüdiger Pryss: Institute of Clinical Epidemiology and Biometry, Julius-Maximilians-University of Würzburg, 97080 Würzburg, Germany
Harald Baumeister: Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Ulm University, 89081 Ulm, Germany
Johanna-Sophie Edler: Mental Health Research Unit, Department of Epidemiology and Health Monitoring, Robert Koch Institute, 12101 Berlin, Germany
Ana Sofia Oliveira Gonçalves: Institute of Public Health, Charité—Universitätsmedizin Berlin, 10117 Berlin, Germany
Caroline Cohrdes: Mental Health Research Unit, Department of Epidemiology and Health Monitoring, Robert Koch Institute, 12101 Berlin, Germany

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 12, 1-18

Abstract: Loneliness and lack of social well-being are associated with adverse health outcomes and have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Smartphone communication data have been suggested to help monitor loneliness, but this requires further evidence. We investigated the informative value of smartphone communication app data for predicting subjective loneliness and social well-being in a sample of 364 participants ranging from 18 to 78 years of age (52.2% female; mean age = 42.54, SD = 13.22) derived from the CORONA HEALTH APP study from July to December 2020 in Germany. The participants experienced relatively high levels of loneliness and low social well-being during the time period characterized by the COVID-19 pandemic. Apart from positive associations with phone call use times, smartphone communication app use was associated with social well-being and loneliness only when considering the age of participants. Younger participants with higher use times tended to report less social well-being and higher loneliness, while the opposite association was found for older adults. Thus, the informative value of smartphone communication use time was rather small and became evident only in consideration of age. The results highlight the need for further investigations and the need to address several limitations in order to draw conclusions at the population level.

Keywords: loneliness; social well-being; passive data; app; smartphone communication; COVID-19; social media use; age differences; public mental health; mental health monitoring (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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