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

Preprint

10.31219/osf.io/krqb

Media Representation Initiative

The Media Representation Initiative combines teaching, research and impact to improve media representation for youth

The Associations of Active and Passive Social Media Use With Well-being: A Critical Scoping Review

A recurring claim in the literature is that active social media use (ASMU) leads to increases in well-being, whereas passive social media use (PSMU) leads to decreases in well-being. The aim of this review was to investigate the validity of this claim by comparing the operationalizations and results of studies into the association of ASMU and PSMU with well-being (e.g., happiness) and ill-being (e.g., depression). We found 40 survey-based studies, which utilized a hodgepodge of 36 operationalizations of ASMU and PSMU and which yielded 172 associations of ASMU and/or PSMU with well-/ill-being. Most studies did not support the hypothesized associations of ASMU and PSMU with well-/ill-being. Time spent on ASMU and PSMU may be too coarse to lead to meaningful associations with well-/ill-being. Therefore, future studies should take characteristics of the content of social media (e.g., the valence), its senders (e.g., pre-existing mood), and receivers (e.g., differential susceptibility) into account

In Their Own Words: How Adolescents Use Social Media and How It Affects Them

The aim of this qualitative study was to uncover homogeneity (commonalities between adolescents), heterogeneity (differences between adolescents), and duality (differences within adolescents) in the relationship between adolescents’ social media use and well-being. To do so, 8 focus groups with 55 adolescents aged 14–17 were conducted. Anchored in the differential susceptibility to media effects model, we examined adolescents’ (1) individual motives and (2) moods leading to social media use, (3) the nature of this use, (4) their affective responses, and (5) perceived longer-term effects. Through deductive thematic analysis, we noted large homogeneity in motives for social media use but heterogeneity in moods leading to social media use. In addition, our findings revealed heterogeneity and duality in the affective responses and the perceived long-term effects of social media use. This duality, where the same individual is affected in both positive and negative ways by social media use, appeared in various forms: concurrently , when adolescents experience conflicting feelings simultaneously, such as feeling both envy and inspiration; alternately , when adolescents shift between experiences, such as feelings of connection and isolation; and sequentially , for example, where initial enjoyment gradually turns into boredom. Furthermore, duality appeared across different cognitive and affective aspects of well-being. Directions for future research are provided on how to examine the role and meaning of various forms of homogeneity, heterogeneity, and duality in the relationship between adolescents’ social media use and well-being

In Their Own Words: How Adolescents Differ in Their Social Media Use and How it Affects Them

Despite a burgeoning literature into the relationship between social media use (SMU) and adolescent well-being, clear conclusions about this relationship remain elusive as the literature has yielded a mixed bag of results. The aim of this study is to take a qualitative approach to improve our understanding of individual differences in (a) adolescents’ motives for using SMU, (b) their social media-related mood management, and (c) the effects they experience due to SMU. Based on eight focus groups among 55 adolescents ranging in age from 14 to 17 years, we found considerable homogeneity in adolescents’ motives to turn to social media. But we also found substantial heterogeneity in the moods that predict their SMU, their affective responses to SMU, and the effects they experienced due to SMU. Such sizeable individual differences may, in part, explain the inconsistent results in earlier quantitative work. We end with three lessons for future self-report studies

sj-docx-1-sms-10.1177_20563051241248591 – Supplemental material for In Their Own Words: How Adolescents Use Social Media and How It Affects Them

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-sms-10.1177_20563051241248591 for In Their Own Words: How Adolescents Use Social Media and How It Affects Them by Amber van der Wal, Patti M. Valkenburg and Irene I. van Driel in Social Media + Society</p

Project 2 - Who Benefits From Social Media Use and Who Does Not?

Ever since the introduction of social media, such as Facebook and Instagram, researchers have been studying whether the use of such media may affect adolescents’ well-being. These studies have typically reported mixed findings, yielding either small negative, small positive, or no effects of social media use on well-being (for recent reviews, see for example Best, Manktelow, &amp; Taylor, 2014; James et al., 2017; McCrae, Gettings, &amp; Purssell, 2017; Sarmiento et al., 2018). While this prior work has provided useful insights, it has recently been criticized, most notably by Orben, Dienlin and Przybylski (2019). The main concern of Orben and colleagues (2019) pertained to the fact that most previous research has made inferences about the effects of social media on well-being from between-person rather than within-person associations. Such between-person associations can be useful to understand whether adolescents who use social media more (or less) often than their peers experience lower (or higher) levels of well-being than these peers (Schmiedek &amp; Dirk, 2015; Hamaker, 2012). Yet, the question whether social media use affects an adolescent’s well-being is a question about within-person processes, which can best be answered by investigating fluctuations within single adolescents across multiple points in time (Schmiedek &amp; Dirk, 2015; Hamaker, 2012; Keijsers &amp; van Roekel, 2018). After all, if social media use has any effect on well-being, this should be reflected in changes in well-being within single individuals. Accordingly, Orben and colleagues (2019) called for studies that investigate such within-person associations (also see Whitlock &amp; Masur, 2019). With this study, we aim to provide a better understanding of the association between social media and adolescent well-being. The study will be one of the first to investigate unique, person-to-person differences to understand how the effects of social media use may differ from adolescent to adolescent. To that end, we will conduct an experience sampling method (ESM) study. In this study, we aim to investigate (1) the association between active and passive social media use and well-being, and (2) person-to-person differences in this association. More specifically, we will investigate how many adolescents feel worse after using social media, how many feel better, and how many do not experience any changes in their well-being. The study consists of two phases: A baseline survey and a personalized week-long experience sampling (ESM) study, among a sample of 14- and 15-year-olds. The paper linked to this project is published in Scientific Reports (rdcu.be/b5l2N). Citation: Beyens, I., Pouwels, J.L., van Driel, I.I., Keijsers, L., &amp; Valkenburg, P.M. (2020). The effect of social media on well-being differs from adolescent to adolescent. Scientific Reports, 10. This project is part of Project AWeSome (https://osf.io/38qcg/)