Publication type
Journal Article
Authors
Publication date
March 15, 2018
Summary:
Background: Adolescents are among the highest consumers of social media while research has shown that their well-being decreases with age. The temporal relationship between social media interaction and well-being is not well established. The aim of this study was to examine whether the changes in social media interaction and two well-being measures are related across ages using parallel growth models. Methods: Data come from five waves of the youth questionnaire, 10-15 years, of the Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study (pooled n = 9859). Social media interaction was assessed through daily frequency of chatting on social websites. Well-being was measured by happiness with six domains of life and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Results: Findings suggest gender differences in the relationship between interacting on social media and well-being. There were significant correlations between interacting on social media and well-being intercepts and between social media interaction and well-being slopes among females. Additionally higher social media interaction at age 10 was associated with declines in well-being thereafter for females, but not for males. Results were similar for both measures of well-being. Conclusions: High levels of social media interaction in early adolescence have implications for well-being in later adolescence, particularly for females. The lack of an association among males suggests other factors might be associated with their reduction in well-being with age. These findings contribute to the debate on causality and may inform future policy and interventions.
Published in
BMC Public Health
Volume
Volume: 18:321
DOI
https://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-018-5220-4
ISSN
14712458
Subjects
Notes
Open Access
© The Author(s). 2018
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Extensive media coverage by over 400 outlets worldwide
Related Publications
-
Guest blog: Taking time out to go Scroll Free
Cara Booker, Yvonne J. Kelly, Amanda Sacker,Media - 20180727
-
Social media use diminishes well-being of teenage girls
Cara Booker, Yvonne J. Kelly, Amanda Sacker,Media - 20180404
-
Social media ‘negatively affects adolescent girls more than boys’
Cara Booker, Yvonne J. Kelly, Amanda Sacker,Media - 20180326
-
Massive rise in children’s use of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram with 1 in 8 using social media for THREE HOURS a day
Cara Booker, Yvonne J. Kelly, Amanda Sacker,Media - 20180326
-
Essex research shows girls using social media are unhappier
Cara Booker, Yvonne J. Kelly, Amanda Sacker,Media - 20180322
-
Calling time on a life of likes could be key to girls’ happiness
Cara Booker, Yvonne J. Kelly, Amanda Sacker,Media - 20180320
-
Too much social media at age 10 may make for unhappy teen girls
Cara Booker, Yvonne J. Kelly, Amanda Sacker,Media - 20180320
-
Social media negatively affects teen girls more than boys
Cara Booker, Yvonne J. Kelly, Amanda Sacker,Media - 20180320
-
Social media use at age 10 could reduce wellbeing of adolescent girls
Cara Booker, Yvonne J. Kelly, Amanda Sacker,Media - 20180319
#524969