Arbeitsbereich

Bevölkerungsdynamik und Nachhaltiges Wohlbefinden

Auf einen Blick Projekte Publikationen Team

Projekt

Technologiegebrauch und seine Effekte auf Zeitnutzungsmuster, soziale Beziehungen und Wohlbefinden

Robert Gordon Rinderknecht, Risto Conte Keivabu, Sophie Lohmann, Daniela Veronica Negraia, Emilio Zagheni

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Technology use, including the use of digital media and social networking sites, is playing an important role in the everyday lives of many people. Despite its prevalence, it is not yet clear how it affects our lives. This project examines the implications of technology and digital media use on various aspects of our lives. One subproject focuses on the ways in which the digitalization of life has changed how we use our time, the types of activities we engage in, the places where we spend our time, and the people with whom we spend it. A second subproject examines whether this new way of life has any effects on our health, and on how satisfied we are with our lives and relationships.

The introduction of the internet, smartphones, and social networking sites has resulted in one of the largest social discontinuities in recent history. We still do not understand the consequences of the digitalization of life for people’s time use and well-being. As part of the first subproject mentioned above, we examined how digitalization affects the ways individuals spend their time. Our analyses based on the American Heritage Time Use Study (1965 to 2018) showed that Americans spent about twice as much time in solitary leisure in 2018 as in 1965 (Rinderknecht et al. 2023). However, the extent of this change differed across the groups we studied. Whereas married respondents reported virtually no change in the time spent in solitary leisure, unmarried respondents, and especially unmarried respondents living alone, reported a significant increase in isolation levels. But demographic changes and changes in the total amount of time spent in leisure explained only around half of the increase in the time spent in solitary leisure between 1965 and 2018. In this article (Rinderknecht et al. 2023), we discussed the possibility that technology use and other social changes explain the other half of this increase, and expanded on this discussion in a book chapter exploring recent research in digital and computational demography (Kashyap et al. 2023).

The increasing presence of social media in our lives has led to concerns that using social media might make us unhappier. The scientific evidence on this question has often been contradictory, with most studies examining the use of social media as a single, unitary construct. To provide a more detailed answer to this question, we analyzed the effect of multi-platform use on well-being. For example, are people who use Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Snapchat unhappier than those who use only Facebook? And are people in this latter group unhappier than those who are not on social media at all? We analyzed data from the General Social Survey, a representative sample of US adults, and applied propensity-score adjustment techniques to partially correct for self-selection effects (Lohmann and Zagheni 2020). Overall, we found no consistent effects on well-being. When we did see negative effects of multi-platform use – for example, symptoms of depression – these were limited to middle-aged and older people, and did not apply to young adults. These findings contribute to the debate on the health-related effects of social media use and provide evidence that even multi-platform social media users do not report lower well-being than less intensive users.

Die Zeit, die wir in unserer Freizeit allein mit der Technik verbringen, hat zugenommen, aber es gibt keinen Zusammenhang zwischen der Anzahl der von uns genutzten Social-Media-Plattformen und unserer Zufriedenheit

(A) Mittelwerte und 95 %-Konfidenzintervalle des selbst eingeschätzten Glücks (1 = sehr glücklich, 0 = ziemlich glücklich, -1 = nicht so glücklich), aufgeschlüsselt danach, wie viele Social-Media-Plattformen die Befragten nutzten (Daten: General Social Survey, 2016). (B) Die Abbildung zeigt die durchschnittlichen täglichen Minuten, die zwischen 1965 und 2018 in einsamer Freizeit verbracht wurden, aufgeschlüsselt nach Art der Freizeitaktivität (Daten: American Heritage Time Use Study (AHTUS)). © MPIDR

Publikationen

Benard, S.; Kristin, K.; Long, D.; Meanwell, E.; Rinderknecht, R. G.; Wright, E.; Lista, P.:

Paths of glory: when do people gain social status for intergroup revenge or forgiveness?

Social Psychology Quarterly. forthcoming. (2026)    

Rinderknecht, R. G.; Negraia, D. V.; Lohmann, S.; Zagheni, E.:

Unmarried and increasingly alone: solitary leisure among unmarried, solo dwelling Americans, 1965 to 2018

Social Indicators Research 182:32, 1–16. (2026)    

Rinderknecht, R. G.; Negraia, D. V.; Lohmann, S.; Zagheni, E.:

Understanding the growth of solitary leisure in the U.S., 1965 – 2018

MPIDR Working Paper WP-2023-025. (2023)    

Lohmann, S.; Zagheni, E.:

Multi-platform social media use: little evidence of impacts on adult well-being

MPIDR Working Paper WP-2020-023. (2020)