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The concept of "mobile youth culture" is frequently used in the field of adolescent mobile phone research to refer to the distinctive ways in which youths around the world embed the mobile phone in their everyday lives. Little attention, however, has been devoted to its theoretical foundations. Drawing from youth culture theory and new (mobile) media theories, this article conceptually develops mobile youth culture by (a) describing the commonalities in adolescent mobile phone use that constitute the culture, and by (b) discussing the origins of these commonalities through an analysis of the network, the social and personal logics inherent in mobile communication technology, and the way these are appropriated by youths to accommodate their transition to adulthood. The article concludes by pointing out the shortcomings of the concept: The limited attention for the heterogeneity in adolescent media use, the integration of mobile media technologies into young people's media repertoires, the cross-generational implications of mobile media use, and the impact of local context and culture.

Although the ubiquitous connectivity afforded by mobile media brings benefits to people's work, social, and leisure lives, these benefits are sometimes overshadowed by the burdens of 24/7 connectivity, which challenge the well-being of individuals and society. Digital well-being is an emerging concept that refers to how people experience these benefits and burdens. This Special Issue brings together five articles that push the boundaries of digital well-being research by shedding light on the opportunities and challenges that people experience in relation to mobile connectivity, exploring the role of digital disconnection for digital well-being, and theorizing the conceptual underpinnings of digital well-being. In this editorial, we first give a definitional overview of the digital well-being concept and situate it in the field of mobile media and communication scholarship. Next, we identify two key issues that emerge from the Special Issue, and explain how the individual articles further our understanding of them. These issues are: (a) the strong conceptual link between digital well-being and digital disconnection; and (b) the conceptual difference between digital well-being as a psychological condition and as a socio-cultural artefact. To end, we present a future research agenda on digital well-being by first identifying current knowledge gaps, and next highlighting several themes that we anticipate as crucial in the forthcoming decade of digital well-being research in an age of mobile connectivity.

Contemporary children live in datafied societies in which they navigate and use technological innovations that drive on their personal information. Instructing privacy literacy is often presented as a key solution to help children manage their personal data responsibly. While there is agreement on the empowering potential of privacy literacy for children, there are also concerns over the burden that this responsibility places on them and their capacity for resilience. Children are key stakeholders in this debate. Nonetheless, we rarely hear their voices on issues related to their online privacy and data responsibilization. The articles included in this thematic issue account for this limitation by amplifying the voices of children, looking into the practices of parents and exploring the role of the tools being used.

This mixed-methods study investigates whether online vigilance promotes mental fatigue, and whether this effect is greater when under pressure to be available online. Additionally, it examines whether passively sensed smartphone behavior can serve as a digital proxy for online vigilance. Data were collected from 1,315 adult participants, who received 84 experience sampling questionnaires over 14 days, providing 67,762 usable datapoints on individuals' perceptions of momentary online vigilance, mental fatigue, and availability pressure. Additionally, the smartphone use of 834 participants was passively monitored. Findings revealed both a momentary and lagged association between self-reported online vigilance and self-reported mental fatigue. Availability pressure was not a significant moderator, but did predict mental fatigue directly and indirectly, by promoting online vigilance. We found behavioral smartphone use features were weakly associated with self-reported online vigilance and mental fatigue. Overall, this study provides initial support that online vigilance may play a role in the development of mental health conditions such as burnout via its tendency to promote one of its precursors, mental fatigue.

Procrastination is an increasingly prevalent phenomenon. Although research suggests smartphones might be involved, little is known about the momentary association between different patterns of smartphone use and procrastination. In a preregistered study, 221 students ( Mage = 20, 55% female) self-reported procrastination five times a day for 30 days (i.e., experience sampling method) while their smartphone use was continuously monitored (i.e., passive logging). Using dynamic structural equation modeling on 27,151 observations, we estimated momentary within-person associations between procrastination and (a) total smartphone use and use of specific application categories (social media, messaging, browsers, games, and video streaming), (b) notifications, and (c) smartphone use fragmentation. Procrastination was positively albeit weakly associated with all aforementioned patterns, and associations varied from person to person. Collectively, our findings suggest these popular devices potentially encourage dilatory behavior.

AbstractSuccessful conflict resolution is important in romantic relationships. With the advent of computer‐mediated communication (CMC), partners can resolve conflict using CMC. But is CMC as effective as face‐to‐face communication for conflict resolution? And does the effectiveness depend on attachment style? We asked 100 romantic couples to discuss a conflict topic and randomly assigned them to do so face‐to‐face or via CMC. Levels of distress, anger, and conflict resolution did not differ between face‐to‐face and CMC discussions. Attachment style did not moderate these findings. A more anxious and a more avoidant attachment style were associated with higher levels of distress and anger. We conclude that there is no indication that resolving conflict face‐to‐face has advantages over resolving conflict via CMC.