Background: Alcohol is often consumed in a social context. We aim to investigate whether social mobile sensing is associated with real-world social interactions and alcohol consumption. In addition, we investigate how social restriction policies implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic have influenced these associations.
Methods: We conducted a smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment (EMA) study for 7 days over a 213-day period from 8 August 2020 to 9 March 2021 in Germany, including both no-lockdown and lockdown stages. Participants used a smartphone application which passively collects data on social behavior (e.g., app usage, phone calls, SMS). Moreover, we assessed real-world social interactions and alcohol consumption via daily questionnaires.
Results: We found that each one-hour increase in social media usage was associated with a 40.2% decrease in the average number of drinks consumed. Mediation analysis suggested that social media usage decreases alcohol intake through decreased real-world social interactions. Notably, we did not find that any significant influence of the lockdown stage on the association between social mobile sensing and alcohol intake.
Conclusions: Our study suggests that people who use more social media drink less, likely due to reduced face-to-face social interactions. This highlights the potential of social mobile sensing as an objective measure of social activity and its implications for understanding alcohol consumption behavior.
Keywords: Alcohol intake; Dating apps; Objective measures of social activities; Phone calls; Short messaging service (SMS); Social media; Video chats.
Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.