Evidence map›Paper›PMID 34201322›Full record

ArticleInternational journal of environmental research and public health2021

"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, Caroline Cohrdes

Open access · goldAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in International journal of environmental research and public health, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
21citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
6.1field-weighted citation impact, top 3% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

21 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 50 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Pooled it
  2. Article
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  5. Mental Health and Mobile Communication Profiles of Crowdsourced Participants.IEEE journal of biomedical and health informatics · 2024
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  8. Review
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  17. COVID-19-Related Social Isolation Predispose to Problematic Internet and Online Video Gaming Use in Italy.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022
    Article
  18. Review
  19. Corona Health-A Study- and Sensor-Based Mobile App Platform Exploring Aspects of the COVID-19 Pandemic.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021
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  20. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

6 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.

Britta WetzelMental Health Research Unit, Department of Epidemiology and Health Monitoring, Robert Koch Institute, 12101 Berlin, Germany.
Rüdiger PryssInstitute of Clinical Epidemiology and Biometry, Julius-Maximilians-University of Würzburg, 97080 Würzburg, Germany.ORCID 0000-0003-1522-785X
Harald BaumeisterDepartment of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Ulm University, 89081 Ulm, Germany.
Johanna-Sophie EdlerMental Health Research Unit, Department of Epidemiology and Health Monitoring, Robert Koch Institute, 12101 Berlin, Germany.
Ana Sofia Oliveira GonçalvesInstitute of Public Health, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, 10117 Berlin, Germany.ORCID 0000-0002-5678-4137
Caroline CohrdesMental Health Research Unit, Department of Epidemiology and Health Monitoring, Robert Koch Institute, 12101 Berlin, Germany.ORCID 0000-0003-0063-4145
Robert Koch Institute · DECharité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin · DEUniversität Ulm · DEUniversity of Würzburg · DE

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

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.

Indexed as

COVID-19PandemicsAdultAgedCommunicationFemaleGermanyHumansLonelinessLongevityMaleSARS-CoV-2Smartphoneage differencesappCOVID-19lonelinessmental health monitoringpassive datapublic mental healthsmartphone communicationsocial media usesocial well-being

Identifiers

PMID34201322
PMCPMC8227237
OpenAlexW3172882876

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.