| Description |
Although the internet is a source of opportunities and challenges for adolescents, it can bring numerous risks, such as excessive internet use (EIU), often perceived as risky and disordered behaviour that can shape an individual’s daily life. Previous research on adolescents’ EIU mainly concentrated on the between-person perspective (comparing those who are more excessive users with those who are less), emphasising the perception of EIU as a stable trait. Questioning this assumption, recent longitudinal studies examined EIU at the within-person level (comparing individuals with themselves in different time points), however, over months or years. Few studies suggested that the levels of EIU symptoms could vary on a daily basis, proposing that the EIU symptoms could be more context-dependent and transient. The current study examined whether daily variability in EIU symptoms could be observed. However, factors that might influence the daily variability of the EIU symptoms were neglected by previous research. Based on the literature, we explored the effect of smartphone social media use, entertainment app use, or use of other electronic devices. In accordance with mood management theory and the compensatory internet use model, we also examined the influence of daily negative affectivity and daily stressors. Participants (N = 114, M age = 14.99, 54% of boys) were involved in the ecological momentary assessment. They installed a research app onto their mobile devices through which questionnaires were sent to them four times a day and which objectively measured time spent in different applications during the 14-day period. Data from 1,926 questionnaires aggregated into 570 daily observations entered the analysis. We found that a substantial proportion of EIU variability was due to day-to-day changes within the individuals (ICC= .54). The multilevel zero-inflated Poisson regression model indicated that social media app use, daily negative affectivity and other media use predicted the EIU symptoms positively at the within-person level, whereas daily stressors did not. Entertainment app use predicted the EIU symptoms at both levels, however, while the relationship at the within-person level was negative, the direction of the between-person relationship was positive. Daily negative affectivity was also positively related to self-reported EIU symptoms at the between-person level. Nevertheless, no significant relationship at the between-person level was found for social media app use, other media use, daily stressors, gender, or age. Our study newly showed that EIU symptoms can fluctuate from day to day, which challenges the prevailing perception of EIU as a stable trait in adolescent research and highlights the need to consider the lithin-person variability. We also contributed to the field by differentiating within-person and between-person levels when examining the influence of various factors on EIU symptoms. Moreover, we discovered that adolescents’ use of specific smartphone apps, daily negative affectivity or usage of other devices may influence the daily level of the EIU symptoms. These findings also have important societal relevance. Understanding day-to-day fluctuations in these factors and their effect on the EIU symptoms may help us to formulate more precise recommendations for stakeholders, parents, or teachers.
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