Browsing by Author "Nikkari, Mikael"

Objectives. Adolescents’ social media use has become more common in the last ten years. At the same time, adolescents’ mental health disorders have increased in Finland, and today up to 20–25% of adolescents suffer from some kind of mental health disorder. The simultaneous increase of these two phenomena has raised concerns that does the use of social media cause mental health problems for young people. In previous meta-analyses, a slight connection has been found between the adolescents’ depression symptoms and the use of social media, but in cross-sectional studies it has not been possible to verify the direction of causality. This thesis examines the relationship between Finnish early and late adolescents’ depression symptoms, extraversion, neuroticism and the use of social media. In addition, adolescents’ extraversion’s and neuroticism’s moderating effect to the connection between depression symptoms and social media use is examined. Methods. 13–14-year-olds (N = 1319) and 18–19-year-olds (N = 751) from the capital region of Finland participated in the data of the study. Participants’ depression symptoms were measured with the DEPS-10 scale, personality traits with the shortened and translated version of the Big Five Inventory, and social media use with the Socio-digital Participation Inventory. Associations were examined using hierarchical linear regression analysis. In addition, interaction terms were used to examine whether the subject's extroversion and neuroticism moderated the connection between depression symptoms and social media use. Results and conclusions. In subjects aged 13–14, the increase in subject's depression symptoms and extraversion were related to increase of social media use. In 18–19-year-old subjects, the increase in subject’s extraversion and neuroticism were related to increase of social media use. Low extraversion and high neuroticism were also related to increase of depressive symptoms in both age groups. However, extraversion and neuroticism did not moderate the relationship between depressive symptoms and social media use in either age group. From the results of the thesis, the conclusion can be drawn that adolescents’ extraversion and neuroticism are both essential factors when studying the adolescents’ depression symptoms and social media use. The connections observed in the thesis are in line with previous meta-analyses.