Tapping into feelings : exploring smartphone use in emotion suppression and expression : an ESM study
Year: 2024
Type: conference-paper
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Drawing from an intensive longitudinal study with a mixed-methods design involving both experience sampling and passive smartphone monitoring (N = 1315, > 60K data points), this study examines the within-person cross-lagged associations between adults' self-reported use of the smartphone for expressing and suppressing negative emotions and their negative affect.Results show adults rarely report using their smartphone for emotion regulation, for both expressing (3.77% of times) and suppressing negative emotions (6.84% of times).In line with expectations, we found that when individuals experienced an increase in negative affect, they were more likely to report having used their smartphone to regulate negative emotions.However, contrary to expectations, we find no meaningful change in negative affect following the engagement in emotion regulation strategies through smartphone media.Additionally, we investigate the role of passively monitored smartphone activities, namely duration of chats and social media use, and find that such activities do not mediate the association between emotion regulation behaviors and changes in affect.Taken together, these results suggest that media selection drives the association between emotion regulation strategies (through smartphones) and negative affect and that engaging in expression and suppression of emotions via smartphone use might not be beneficial.
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7071843529