Days, Schedules, and Attention: How Time Affects Mobile News Consumption Among Young Swiss People

Abstract

News consumption is often treated as static behavior, yet situational and temporal factors play a significant role in shaping how individuals consume news throughout their daily lives. Mobile phones have become a driving force of dynamic news habits, especially among younger audiences. This study aims to bridge the gap between static perceptions of news consumption and the dynamic realities of daily mobile usage. To investigate this, we tracked news usage on the mobile phones of 384 young adults in Switzerland over three weeks in 2021, in a period surrounding a national referendum. These data were combined with two surveys at the beginning and end of the tracking period to examine how a political referendum, daily schedules, and browsing habits are related to the amount of mobile news consumption. Using a Bayesian time-lagged model, we found an increase in news consumption on the day of the referendum, and a slight decrease on weekends and during working hours. We also found that participants read more news when they first opened their phones than as a browsing session continued, and that higher news consumption was substantially associated with the use of X/Twitter and Instagram, but only slightly with TikTok.