Development, validity, and reliability of the parent-adolescent communication about adolescents’ social media use scale (PACAS)

Adolescents spend a substantial portion of their time using social media. Yet, there is a lack of understanding regarding how often parents and adolescents communicate about this social media use. To address this gap, we developed the Parent-Adolescent Communication about Adolescents’ Social Media Use Scale (PACAS). In a first data wave, among 388 Dutch adolescents (13–15 years; 54% girls), exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses distinguished four scales: parental solicitation, adolescent disclosure, adolescent secrecy, and parental knowledge. All four scales had strong internal reliability and correlated in the expected directions. We re-established the validity and internal reliability and obtained test-retest reliability in a second wave, in which 330 adolescents were surveyed again. The findings show that parents and adolescents infrequently communicate about social media. Parental knowledge about adolescents’ social media use strongly depends on the communication efforts of both parties. Altogether, the PACAS provides a valuable tool to explore the dynamics of parent-adolescent communication about social media.</p

Development, validity, and reliability of the parent-adolescent communication about adolescents’ social media use scale (PACAS)

Adolescents spend a substantial portion of their time using social media. Yet, there is a lack of understanding regarding how often parents and adolescents communicate about this social media use. To address this gap, we developed the Parent-Adolescent Communication about Adolescents’ Social Media Use Scale (PACAS). In a first data wave, among 388 Dutch adolescents (13–15 years; 54% girls), exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses distinguished four scales: parental solicitation, adolescent disclosure, adolescent secrecy, and parental knowledge. All four scales had strong internal reliability and correlated in the expected directions. We re-established the validity and internal reliability and obtained test-retest reliability in a second wave, in which 330 adolescents were surveyed again. The findings show that parents and adolescents infrequently communicate about social media. Parental knowledge about adolescents’ social media use strongly depends on the communication efforts of both parties. Altogether, the PACAS provides a valuable tool to explore the dynamics of parent-adolescent communication about social media.</p

The Social Media Disorder Scale

AbstractThere is growing evidence that social media addiction is an evolving problem, particularly among adolescents. However, the absence of an instrument measuring social media addiction hinders further development of the research field. The present study, therefore, aimed to test the reliability and validity of a short and easy to administer Social Media Disorder (SMD) Scale that contains a clear diagnostic cut-off point to distinguish between disordered (i.e. addicted) and high-engaging non-disordered social media users.Three online surveys were conducted among a total of 2198 Dutch adolescents aged 10 to 17. The 9-item scale showed solid structural validity, appropriate internal consistency, good convergent and criterion validity, sufficient test-retest reliability, and satisfactory sensitivity and specificity. In sum, this study generated evidence that the short 9-item scale is a psychometrically sound and valid instruments to measure SMD

Integrating Communication Science and Computational Methods to Study Content-Based Social Media Effects

A pressing societal and scientific question is how social media use affects our cognitions, emotions, and behaviors. To answer this question, fine-grained insight into the content of individuals’ social media use is needed. It is difficult to study content-based social media effects with traditional survey methods because such methods are incapable of capturing the extreme volume and variety of social media content that is shared and received. Therefore, this special issue aims to illustrate how content-based social media effects could be examined by integrating communication sciences and computational methods. We describe a three-step method to investigate content-based media effects, which involves (a) collecting digital trace data, (b) performing automated textual and visual content analysis, and (c) conducting linkage analysis. This Special Issue zooms in on these steps and describes the strengths and weaknesses of different computational methods. We conclude with some challenges that need to be addressed in future research

The effect of social media on well-being differs from adolescent to adolescent

The question whether social media use benefits or undermines adolescents’ well-being is an important societal concern. Previous empirical studies have mostly established across-the-board effects among (sub)populations of adolescents. As a result, it is still an open question whether the effects are unique for each individual adolescent. We sampled adolescents’ experiences six times per day for one week to quantify differences in their susceptibility to the effects of social media on their momentary affective well-being. Rigorous analyses of 2,155 real-time assessments showed that the association between social media use and affective well-being differs strongly across adolescents: While 44% did not feel better or worse after passive social media use, 46% felt better, and 10% felt worse. Our results imply that person-specific effects can no longer be ignored in research, as well as in prevention and intervention programs

Promises and Pitfalls of Social Media Data Donations

Studies assessing the effects of social media use are largely based on measures of time spent on social media. In recent years, scholars increasingly ask for more insights in social media activities and content people engage with. Data Download Packages (DDPs), the archives of social media platforms that each European user has the right to download, provide a new and promising method to collect timestamped and content-based information about social media use. In this paper, we first detail the experiences and insights of a data collection of 110 Instagram DDPs gathered from 102 adolescents. We successively discuss the challenges and opportunities of collecting and analyzing DDPs to help future researchers in their consideration of whether and how to use DDPs. DDPs provide tremendous opportunities to get insight in the frequency, range, and content of social media activities, from browsing to searching and posting. Yet, collecting, processing, and analyzing DDPs is also complex and laborious, and demands numerous procedural and analytical choices and decisions

The Use of Sexually Explicit Internet Material and Its Antecedents: A Longitudinal Comparison of Adolescents and Adults

An implicit assumption in research on adolescents’ use of sexually explicit internet material (SEIM) is that they may feel more attracted to such material than adults, given the “forbidden” character of SEIM for minors. However, systematic comparisons between adolescents’ and adults’ SEIM use and of its antecedents are missing. We conducted a two-wave panel survey among a nationally representative sample of 1,445 Dutch adolescents and a nationally representative sample of 833 Dutch adults. Adolescents’ and adults’ SEIM use was similar. When significant differences in the SEIM use occurred, they indicated that adults used SEIM more often than adolescents. Male adults were the most frequent users of SEIM. No difference in the antecedent structure of SEIM use emerged between adolescents and adults. In both groups, males, sensation seekers, as well as people with a not exclusively heterosexual orientation used SEIM more often. Among adolescents and adults, lower life satisfaction increased SEIM use. Our findings suggest that the frequency of SEIM use and its antecedents are largely the same among adolescents and adults

The Effects of Pathological Gaming on Aggressive Behavior

Studies have shown that pathological involvement with computer or video games is related to excessive gaming binges and aggressive behavior. Our aims for this study were to longitudinally examine if pathological gaming leads to increasingly excessive gaming habits, and how pathological gaming may cause an increase in physical aggression. For this purpose, we conducted a two-wave panel study among 851 Dutch adolescents (49% female) of which 540 played games (30% female). Our analyses indicated that higher levels of pathological gaming predicted an increase in time spent playing games 6 months later. Time spent playing violent games specifically, and not just games per se, increased physical aggression. Furthermore, higher levels of pathological gaming, regardless of violent content, predicted an increase in physical aggression among boys. That this effect only applies to boys does not diminish its importance, because adolescent boys are generally the heaviest players of violent games and most susceptible to pathological involvement

Scripts of Sexual Desire and Danger in US and Dutch Teen Girl Magazines: A Cross-National Content Analysis

The aim of this comparative quantitative content analysis was to investigate how US and Dutch teen girl magazines cover sexual desire (i.e., sexual wanting, and pleasure) and sexual danger (i.e., sexual risk, and negative physical/health consequences of sex). Relying on the sexual scripts framework and Hofstede’s cultural dimension of masculinity/femininity, we examined (a) how the coverage varied for boys and girls, (b) how it differed between the United States and the Netherlands, and (c) how gender differences varied by country. The sample comprised 627 sex-related feature stories from all 2006–2008 issues of three US (i.e., Seventeen, CosmoGirl! United States edition, and Teen) and three Dutch teen girl magazines (i.e., Fancy, CosmoGirl! Netherlands edition, and Girlz!). Overall, sexual wanting occurred more frequently in the US magazines than in the Dutch magazines. In the US coverage, boys’ sexual wanting received more attention than girls’ sexual wanting, whereas in the Dutch coverage sexual wanting was depicted equally often for boys and girls. The depiction of sexual pleasure did not vary by gender in either country, but was generally more visible in the Dutch magazines than in the US magazines. Sexual risks and the negative consequences of sex were associated with girls more than with boys, and were primarily depicted in the US magazines rather than in the Dutch magazines