Differences Between Emerging Adults’ and Adults’ Internet Use Before and During the COVID-19 Emergency: The Role of Well-Being and Mood Regulation

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the significance of Internet use in many contexts of human life (e.g., work/study, family, and leisure), daily activities, and developmental tasks (e.g., transition to university/work) associated with specific life stages (e.g., emerging adults, 18-29 years, and adults, over 30 years old). Based on the lifespan model of developmental challenges and focusing on emerging adulthood and adulthood, the current study analyzed functional and dysfunctional Internet use in two different Italian populations: before and during the COVID-19 emergency. The sample consisted of 375 individuals who completed an online survey before COVID-19 and 286 who completed same survey during the COVID-19 emergency. All questionnaires were related to well-being, life/work satisfaction, problematic Internet use, cyberloafing, and interaction overload. Both samples were further differentiated into three life stages, associated with specific transitions and developmental tasks: early emerging adults (18-24), older emerging adults (25-29), and adults (over 30). Results show how the transitions (and related developmental tasks) of each life stage affect, in relevant ways, the functional or dysfunctional Internet use as well as well-being and life satisfaction related to Internet use

Information Technologies and Consumers’ Well-Being: Latest Research and Future Research Directions

Since our 2021 call for a special issue in the Journal of Interactive Marketing on Information Technologies and Consumers’ Well-Being, interest in this topic has continued to grow. The database Business Source Premier identifies 76 publications since 2021 that have “technology” in the title and include “well-being” in the author-supplied abstract, as well as 447 publications with both “technology” and “well-being” in the abstract. Calls for special issues on technology and well-being topics have also appeared in other major marketing journals in the last two years, including the Journal of Consumer Affairs and Psychology & Marketing. This ever-growing interest in the topic of new technologies and consumers’ well-being can be explained by considering, on one side, the unprecedented development in information and communications technologies, and, on the other side, the increased usage of such technologies by large numbers of consumers in many countries around the world. The accelerating role that the COVID-19 pandemic has had in this process has been acknowledged (Amankwah-Amoah et al. 2021), with the result that new technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things, and augmented and virtual reality, among others, have become increasingly important in consumers’ everyday life and are changing consumers’ experiences in the context of products, services, and brands (Hoyer et al. 2020; Pantano and Scarpi 2022; Puntoni et al. 2021; Zarantonello and Schmitt 2023). Understanding how information technologies are affecting consumers’ well-being therefore represents an area of primary importance. A total of 39 papers from China, Finland, France, India, Italy, Lebanon, Poland, Türkiye, and the United Kingdom were submitted in response to our call for papers, and 12 of them successfully went through the review process and are presented in this special issue. These articles advance our understanding of the relationship between new technologies and consumers’ well-being from different perspectives and through the use of different research methodologies. The aim of this editorial is to discuss the state of current research on information technologies and consumers’ well-being. Accordingly, it provides an overview of the articles in the special issue and highlights how they contribute to the growing literature on the topic. It also identifies and outlines future research directions by indicating and discussing areas that require further investigation

System-level design tool for switched capacitor DC-DC energy scavenging converters

This thesis deals with the system modelling and design of a Switched Capac- itor DC-DC (SC DC-DC) nano-power converter in Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) technology for energy harvesting applications. First of all, after a critical evaluation on the whole Integrated Circuit (IC) system structure, a Python script has been created in order to accurately analyse any system analytical behaviours before instantiating and running the Cadence usual simulations. The code is an upgrade with respect to a pre-existing one ([1]): several com- parisons are listed and explained to show the differences between the two, as well as stressing on our new dedicated features. In order to validate the model on the code, then, a feasibility study has been performed with a 180 nm United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) technol- ogy process in the Cadence Virtuoso design suite. Good results let us state its reliability in being used both for the most of SC DC-DC architectures pre-design analysis and post-design verification: a full design space exploration shows how to use the script. Finally, the SC DC-DC circuit D for bluetooth applications that we present uses the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) 55 nm technol- ogy process and its design has been mostly realized by Luca Intaschi, during his PhD, and Francesco Dalena from Dialog Semiconductor in Livorno. The circuit D converter is meant to be part of a sensor node (that needs to survive in total absence of battery recharge) supplied by a Thermo Electric Generator (TEG) which guarantees a very low input voltage to the system of about 0.2

Online and Offline Life: A New Framework to Understand Problematic Internet Use and Functional Internet Use

The Internet is an important part of our daily lives. The possibility of being technically always connected increases dramatically the amount of the time spent online, and the Internet has become such a pervading part of our lives. The goal of the present research goes beyond the dualism that consider the Internet good or bad, since in the literature there is an excessive imbalance to the problematic/addiction side. Thus, the research tries to answer the question: “when, how and under which conditions is the Internet usage problematic or functional for people?”, considering both, the problematic Internet use (PIU) that lead to an inverse instrumentality, and functional internet use (FIU) that consider the Internet as a functional organ. Sample consist of 2130 participants divided in 574 adolescents, 671 younger emerging adults 163 older emerging adults and 722 adults. Hypotheses of multiple moderation, mediation and moderated moderated mediation are tested using factors both related to the PIU (self-esteem, self-control, online social-support, offline social-support, mindfulness, cognitive absorption) and to the FIU (online social-support, number of online contacts, life satisfaction, job satisfaction). All hypotheses are tested using a multiple regression analysis. The results show that as age decreases, the hours spent online increase, and consequently PIU increases. The most significant difference is between younger emerging adults and older emerging adults, in favor of the latter. Moreover, adults have the highest scores in FIU followed by older emerging adults, adolescents and, lastly, younger emerging adults. Also, gender differences are funded, but only related to age both in problematic and functional Internet use. Limitations regarding the sampling, the instruments and the methodology are reported. The relevance of these findings for future research and the possible practical application in the areas of prevention, education and work are discussed

Enhancing the Potential of Creative Thinking in Children with Educational Robots

This observational study analyzes the effectiveness of the non-humanoid robot Ozobot as interactive-tool for school- children to enhance their potential of creative thinking. Based on the socio-constructivist theoretical background, referring to the zone of proximal development and the socio-cognitive conflict, the study compares three experimental condition (Ozobot Single Work, Ozobot Pair Work, and Control Group) of a problem-solving task with a robot (programming the robot to perform a given route in a preconfigured labyrinth). 171 children (85 females, 86 males), aged between 9 (IV class) and 10 years (V class) of two centralnorthern Italy primary schools, participated in the study. Children were randomly assigned to one of the three group conditions. Results show that children who performed the task alone with the educational robot (Ozobot Single Work) significantly improved their potential of creative thinking, compared both to those who perform the task in pair with the educational robot (Ozobot Pair Work) and to the control group. No gender differences occur

Preliminary evidence on machine learning approaches for clusterizing students’ cognitive profile

Assessing the cognitive abilities of students in academic contexts can provide valuable insights for teachers to identify their cognitive profile and create personalized teaching strategies. While numerous studies have demonstrated promising outcomes in clustering students based on their cognitive profiles, effective comparisons between various clustering methods are lacking in the current literature. In this study, we aim to compare the effectiveness of two clustering techniques to group students based on their cognitive abilities including general intelligence, attention, visual perception, working memory, and phonological awareness. 292 students, aged 11–15 years, participated in the study. A two-level approach based on the joint use of Kohonen's Self-Organizing Map (SOMs) and k-means clustering algorithm was compared with an approach based on the k-means clustering algorithm only. The resulting profiles were then predicted via AdaBoost and ANN supervised algorithms. The results showed that the two-level approach provides the best solution for this problem while the ANN algorithm was the winner in the classification problem. These results laying the foundations for developing a useful instrument for predicting the students’ cognitive profile

Determinants and effects of mobile phone addiction and phubbing: a study in 17 countries

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Measurement invariance of the phubbing scale across 20 countries

Mobile phone addiction is a robust phenomenon observed throughout the world. The social aspect of mobile phone use is crucial; therefore, phubbing is a part of the mobile phone addiction phenomenon. Phubbing is defined as ignoring an interlocutor by glancing at one's mobile phone during a face-to-face conversation. The main aim of this study was to investigate how the Phubbing Scale (containing 10 items) might vary across countries, and between genders. Data were collected in 20 countries: Belarus, Brazil, China, Croatia, Ecuador, India, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, UK, Ukraine and USA. The mean age across the sample (N = 7696, 65.8% women, 34.2% men) was 25.32 years (SD = 9.50). The cross-cultural invariance of the scale was investigated using multigroup confirmatory factor analyses (MGCFA) as well as the invariance analyses. Additionally, data from each country were assessed individually via confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs). We obtained two factors, based on only eight of the items: (a) communication disturbances and (b) phone obsession. The 8 items Phubbing Scale

The globalizability of temporal discounting

Economic inequality is associated with preferences for smaller, immediate gains over larger, delayed ones. Such temporal discounting may feed into rising global inequality, yet it is unclear whether it is a function of choice preferences or norms, or rather the absence of sufficient resources for immediate needs. It is also not clear whether these reflect true differences in choice patterns between income groups. We tested temporal discounting and five intertemporal choice anomalies using local currencies and value standards in 61 countries (N = 13,629). Across a diverse sample, we found consistent, robust rates of choice anomalies. Lower-income groups were not significantly different, but economic inequality and broader financial circumstances were clearly correlated with population choice patterns