Browsing by Author "Huuskonen, Olga"

Objectives. According to previous research heavy social media use is associated with poor psychosocial well-being in adolescents. The direction of this association is not, however yet clear. The majority of previous studies are cross-sectional and there are not many studies focusing on early adolescents. The objective of this study was to investigate longitudinal associations between social media use and psychosocial well-being in 10–15-year-old boys and girls. In addition, the study tested whether the associations are age dependent. Methods. The participants (n=6422) of this study were a part of Understanding Society: The UK Household Longitudinal Study (2009-). The data came from 3 waves (2011-2013, 2013-2015 and 2015-2017) of the study and participants were 10–15-year-olds in every wave. Social media use was assessed through the daily amount (hours) spent chatting or interacting on social media websites and apps. Psychosocial well-being was measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. The study was conducted with repeated measurements method and by using multilevel modeling. The associations between social media use and psychosocial well-being were examined with linear regression analysis and ordinal logistic regression analysis. Results and conclusions. Gender differences were found in the longitudinal association between social media use and psychosocial well-being. Among girls, even less than an hour of social media use predicted higher total and externalizing symptoms, and among 10–11-year-old girls over 4 hours of social media use predicted higher internalizing symptoms. Social media use did not predict later psychosocial well-being among boys. Higher externalizing symptoms predicted heavier social media use among both boys and girls, and higher total symptoms also predicted heavier use but only among boys. This study found that social media use predicted later declines in psychosocial well-being among girls, but not among boys. Poor psychosocial well-being, mainly higher externalizing symptoms, predicted later heavier social media use among both boys and girls. These effects were however relatively small.