Mobile phones, television, internet services, games, and social media offer diverse and numerous opportunities for coping with stress in everyday life. Different disciplines have contributed to answering how these media are used for coping. Consequently, fragmented and disconnected research perspectives have evolved. To improve integration, we conducted a scoping review. A total of 318 articles met the inclusion criteria. Three main perspectives on media use for coping were identified: (1) stress and coping, (2) mood management and emotion regulation, and (3) media addiction and problematic media use. Each perspective has contributed to different aspects of the use of media for coping. Six advancements are proposed, which attempt to integrate perspectives and to guide future research on coping using media.

No abstract

No abstract

Previous research on stress and media use mainly concentrated on between-person effects. We add to this research field by additionally assessing within-person associations, assuming that experiencing more stress than usual goes along with more nomophobia (“no-mobile-phone phobia”) and more passive and active Facebook use than usual, cross-sectionally and over time, and by exploring potential age differences. We conducted a secondary analysis of three waves of a representative multi-wave survey of adult Dutch internet users ( N = 861). Specifically, we used two subsamples: (1) smartphones users for the analyses on nomophobia (n = 600) and (2) Facebook users for the analyses on social media (n = 469). Employing random-intercept cross-lagged panel models, we found within-person correlations between nomophobia and stress at one time-point, but not over time. For the younger age group (18–39 years), more passive Facebook use than usual was associated with more stress than usual six months later, and more stress than usual was followed by less passive Facebook use six month later. There were no longitudinal relationships for active Facebook use across the different age groups. Methodological and theoretical implications are discussed.