Observations on mobile communication and well-being research

Abstract

The year 2013 marked not only the inaugural issue of Mobile Media & Communication, but also the start of my academic career and the development of my first mobile phone and well-being study (Chan, 2015). Whether it is conceived as “mental health,” “subjective well-being,” “flourishing,” “positive thinking,” “life satisfaction,” or another term, well-being has been the subject of scientific research for more than a century (Rodman & Fry, 2009). The longevity of the literature is understandable because of the accumulative evidence across the decades that high citizen well-being produces a variety of normatively desirable individual and societal benefits. These include increased mortality, health, academic achievement, workforce productivity, and prosocial behaviors (Maccagnan et al., 2018). During my graduate studies, I was especially fascinated by the ongoing academic and societal discourses on the beneficial and deleterious consequences of mobile phones (i.e., Rainie & Wellman, 2012; Turkle, 2011) as well as my own gradual realization that the mobile phone has become so integral to my everyday life. The successive emergence of new communication technologies since the 1990s such as the Internet and social media have stimulated a vast literature on whether they engender or diminish psychological well-being. Research on mobile phones is no exception given that it is one of the fastest-diffusing technologies in the world (Wei, 2013). Indeed, a cursory search of mobile phone and well-being related keywords in Google Scholar exemplifies the growth, which shows few signs of abating (Figure 1). As an author, reviewer, thesis supervisor, and associate editor of two journals, I have also