What’s trending? An in vivo examination of smartphone usage among student-athletes

ABSTRACT This exploratory study is the first to present an in vivo method to capture rich, longitudinal data on the prevalence and features of student-athletes’ smartphone usage and concurrent psychosocial outcomes. Ten competitive Canadian student-athletes were meticulously tracked through the collection of monthly self-report surveys and real-time smartphone usage data over the course of a full academic year. Half of them exhibited heavy while the other half exhibited light usage trends. The athletes predominantly used their smartphone for social media. Changes in their moderate-to-high level of psychosocial functioning was highly nuanced over time, similar to their amount of usage. Findings support a new wave of literature deemphasizing a simple relationship between smartphone usage and negative psychosocial outcomes, and encourage further study of individual characteristics, such as purpose of usage. This research lays the foundation for larger-scale studies to assess the impact of student-athletes’ smartphone usage.