Problematische Handynutzung? - Erhebung und Konsequenzen für die Studienleistung

Mobile phones have become an important part of our everyday life and are no longer a "new technology". Based on the addiction criteria of the DSM-5, a separate diagnosis, "mobile phone addiction", is already being discussed, similar to the Internet Gaming Disorder. Little controversy exists about the existence of problematic mobile phone use such as excessive use, use in contexts that may lead to danger, or use in ways that cause negative consequences. In order to be able to investigate scientifically problematic mobile phone use in German-speaking countries, Study 1 translated the questionnaire Problematic Use of Mobile Phones (PUMP), which had already been established in English, and examined its psychometric properties. A single factor structure, very good 14-day retest reliability and good validity characteristics were found. The questionnaire, which is very short with 20 items, thus showed good psychometric properties in German and may be used in future research. Study 2 and 3 addressed the potential negative consequences of mobile phone use. Using a simple mobile phone game, the effects of the parallel use of the game (every 2 minutes for 20 seconds) on learning performance (multiple-choice quiz) to study-related tasks (reading texts: study 2; attending lectures: study 3) were investigated. The use of push notifications was also varied. For reading texts, neither gaming per se, nor the use of push notifications showed a significant negative effect on learning performance or reading time. Since the statistical non-significance of these tests does not imply the absence of an effect, equivalence tests were conducted, but these also failed to demonstrate equivalence. When watching a lecture-like video, significantly poorer learning performance was found for participants who played the game with push notifications compared to participants who watched the video without playing the mobile game. With push notifications disabled, the game did not negatively affect learning performance. The experiments in Studies 2 and 3 ensured high internal validity but yielded inconclusive results. Reasons for the similarity of performance across the groups with and without interruption due to the game could be nonspecific practice effects (all participants owned a smartphone), low variance in participants' abilities (high performance), or low complexity of the game. Given these limitations, the significant negative effect of parallel mobile phone gaming with push notifications on learning performance with only a short lecture-style video is particularly noteworthy. To sum up, the present dissertation contributed to the research of problematic mobile phone use: On the one hand, by providing for future research a short instrument with psychometric properties for the German-speaking area and, on the other hand, by showing negative consequences of previously little investigated functions and usage modes of the mobile phone (push-notifications, mobile phone games). In particular, the fact that a negative consequence can be caused or prevented by manually changing a minor setting (deactivating push notifications) is an important implication for practice.