Diabetes, Devices, and Daily Life: Understanding Situations of Mobile Media Use in Chronic Disease Self-Management

Over the past 30 years, mobile media have fundamentally transformed our media landscape, including health behaviors such as the self-management of diabetes, which affects about 1 in 10 people in Germany. However, empirical evidence on mobile media use in chronic disease self-management remains inconclusive: most studies focus on single devices and apps rather than broader mobile media ecosystems. Furthermore, they do not account for situational contexts that can shape access to and perceptions of media use. Using a framework structuring the use of metamedia considering situational contexts, we explored mobile media use in diabetes self-management via experience sampling across six waves (June to November 2025) among 102 patients, yielding 4,139 self-management situations involving mobile media. Multilevel latent class analysis identified four situation types that vary by devices used, self-management domains, and physical and social contexts. Further analyses revealed significant differences across the situation types in perceived importance, AI use, injunctive norms, and triggers. Moreover, we identified seven person-level types that differ in self-management behavior but not significantly in sociodemographic or health-related characteristics. Findings underscore the role of mobile media, particularly smartphones, in diabetes self-management, but also highlight their unexploited potential, as situations rarely extend beyond functional routine self-management (e.g., symptom documentation).