In-Person Contact Begets Calling and Texting: Interpersonal Motives for Cell Phone Use, Face-to-Face interaction, and Loneliness

This study examined how cell-phone use is related to interpersonal motives for using cell phones, face-to-face communication, and loneliness. A survey of 232 college students who owned a cell phone revealed that affection and inclusion were relatively strong motivations for using voice calls and text messaging, and that interpersonal motives were positively related to the amount of cell-phone use, including calling and texting. The amount of face-to-face interaction was positively associated with the participants' cell-phone use and their interpersonal motives for using cell phones: the more the participants engaged in face-to-face interaction with other people, the higher their motives were and the more frequent cell-phone use was. Loneliness did not have a direct relation to cell-phone use. Instead, the participants with higher levels of loneliness were less likely to engage in face-to-face social interaction, which led them to use cell phones less and to be less motivated to use cell phones for interpersonal purposes.Communication Studie

Cell Phone Information Seeking Explains Blood Pressure in African American Women

Although cell phone use and Internet access via cell phone is not marked by racial disparities, little is known about how cell phone use relates to blood pressure and health information seeking behaviors. The purposes of this study were to (a) describe Internet activities, cell phone use, and information seeking; (b) determine differences in blood pressure and information seeking between cell phone information seekers and nonseekers; and (c) examine cell phone information seeking as a predictor of blood pressure in African American women. Participants ( N = 147) completed a survey and had their blood pressure measured. Independent-sample t tests showed a significant difference in systolic blood pressure in cell phone information seekers and nonseekers. Linear regression revealed cell phone information seeking as an independent predictor of systolic blood pressure, despite confounders. It is possible that cell phone information seekers were using health information to make decisions about self-management of blood pressure

The Impact of Driver Cell Phone Use on Accidents

Cell phone use is increasing worldwide, leading to a concern that cell phone use while driving increases accidents. Several countries, three states and Washington, D.C. have banned the use of hand-held cell phones while driving. In this paper, we develop a new approach for estimating the relationship between cell phone use while driving and accidents. Our approach is the first to allow for the direct estimation of the impact of a cell phone ban while driving. It is based on new survey data from over 7,000 individuals. This paper differs from previous research in two significant ways: first, we use a larger sample of individual-level data; and second, we test for selection effects, such as whether drivers who use cell phones are inherently less safe drivers, even when not on the phone. The paper has two key findings. First, the impact of cell phone use on accidents varies across the population. This result implies that previous estimates of the impact of cell phone use on risk for the population, based on accident-only samples, may be overstated by about one-third. Second, once we correct for endogeneity, there is no significant effect of hands-free or hand-held cell phone use on accidents.

God and the Machine: A Correlational Study on Mobile Phone Dependence, Religious Coping, and Mental Health

Research on the various effects of mobile phones did not begin to be published until after they had already been integrated into society. To date, the results of various studies looking into the relationship between mobile phone use and mental health demonstrate that phones, if used in problematic ways, have negative effects on mental health. Even so, there are no studies looking into problematic mobile phone use and how it correlates with spirituality and positive religious coping as well as mental health. Due to this gap in the research, this anonymous online study was designed to look into correlations between problematic cell phone use, positive religious coping, and mental health. The Adapted Cell Phone Addiction Test (ACPAT) was used to assess problematic cell phone use, the Religious Coping Activities Scales (RCOPE) were used to assess positive religious coping, and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-42) were used to assess mental health

Internet Access and Use: Does Cell Phone Interviewing Make a Difference?

Looks at whether adding cell phone interviews to surveys about Americans' use of and attitudes toward the Internet lead to significantly different survey results by comparing the demographic data and responses of landline and cell phone interviewees

The Impact of Driver Cell Phone Use on Accidents

Cell phone use is increasing worldwide, leading to a concern that cell phone use while driving increases accidents. We develop a new approach for estimating the relationship between cell phone use while driving and accidents, based on new survey data. We test for selection effects, such as whether drivers who use cell phones are inherently less safe drivers, even when not on the phone. The paper has two key findings. First, the impact of cell phone use on accidents varies across the population. This result implies that previous estimates of the impact of cell phone use on risk for the population, based on accident-only samples, may therefore be overstated by 36%. Second, once we correct for endogeneity, there is no significant effect of hands-free or hand-held cell phone use on accidents.cellular telephones and driving, safety regulation, selection effects

The Impact of Driver Cell Phone Use on Accidents

Cell phone use is increasing worldwide, leading to a concern that cell phone use while driving increases accidents. Several countries, three states and Washington, D.C. have banned the use of hand-held cell phones while driving. In this paper, we develop a new approach for estimating the relationship between cell phone use while driving and accidents. Our approach is the first to allow for the direct estimation of the impact of a cell phone ban while driving. It is based on new survey data from over 7,000 individuals. This paper differs from previous research in two significant ways: first, we use a larger sample of individual-level data; and second, we test for selection effects, such as whether drivers who use cell phones are inherently less safe drivers, even when not on the phone. The paper has two key findings. First, the impact of cell phone use on accidents varies across the population. This result implies that previous estimates of the impact of cell phone use on risk for the population, based on accident-only samples, may be overstated by about one-third. Second, once we correct for endogeneity, there is no significant effect of hands-free or hand-held cell phone use on accidents.

Maternal cell phone use in early pregnancy and child's language, communication and motor skills at 3 and 5 years: the Norwegian mother and child cohort study (MoBa)

BACKGROUND: Cell phone use during pregnancy is a public health concern. We investigated the association between maternal cell phone use in pregnancy and child's language, communication and motor skills at 3 and 5 years. METHODS: This prospective study includes 45,389 mother-child pairs, participants of the MoBa, recruited at mid-pregnancy from 1999 to 2008. Maternal frequency of cell phone use in early pregnancy and child language, communication and motor skills at 3 and 5 years, were assessed by questionnaires. Logistic regression was used to estimate the associations. RESULTS: No cell phone use in early pregnancy was reported by 9.8% of women, while 39%, 46.9% and 4.3% of the women were categorized as low, medium and high cell phone users. Children of cell phone user mothers had 17% (OR = 0.83, 95% CI: 0.77, 0.89) lower adjusted risk of having low sentence complexity at 3 years, compared to children of non-users. The risk was 13%, 22% and 29% lower by low, medium and high maternal cell phone use. Additionally, children of cell phone users had lower risk of low motor skills score at 3 years, compared to children of non-users, but this association was not found at 5 years. We found no association between maternal cell phone use and low communication skills. CONCLUSIONS: We reported a decreased risk of low language and motor skills at three years in relation to prenatal cell phone use, which might be explained by enhanced maternal-child interaction among cell phone users. No evidence of adverse neurodevelopmental effects of prenatal cell phone use was reported

The phone as a tool for combining online and offline social activity – teenagers’ phone access to an online community

We have analyzed two months of log data and 100 surveys on the phone use of a Swedish online community for teenagers to investigate the mobile use of an established online service. This shows that the phone use mostly takes place during times of the day when teenagers have social time and the use is not influenced by the availability of a computer. The phone makes the community access more private compared to the computer, but teens do share the use when they want to. The cell phone bridges the online and offline social communities and allows teens to participate in both at the same time. The online community is not only a place for social activity online, it is also a social activity offline that is carried out face-to-face with friends. The cell phone thus was a tool for the teens to combine their participation in the online and the offline world

Cell internet use 2013

Nearly two thirds of US cell phone owners use their phone to go online, and one in five cell owners do most of their online browsing on their phone.These are findings from a national telephone survey conducted April 17-May 19, 2013 among 2,252 adults ages 18 and over, including 1,127 interviews conducted on the respondent’s cell phone.  Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish.  The margin of error for all cell phone owners (n=2,076) is plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.  The margin of error for cell phone owners who go online using their phone (n=1,185) is plus or minus 3.3 percentage points