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. 2020 Jul 1;10(1):10763.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-67727-7.

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

Ine Beyens  1 , J Loes Pouwels  2 , Irene I van Driel  2 , Loes Keijsers  3 , Patti M Valkenburg  2
Affiliations

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

Ine Beyens et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

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.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The dose–response association between passive Instagram use (in minutes per hour) and affective well-being for each individual adolescent (n = 46). Red lines represent significant negative within-person associations, green lines represent significant positive within-person associations, and gray lines represent non-significant within-person associations. A graph was created for each participant who had completed at least 10 assessments. A total of 13 participants were excluded because they had completed less than 10 assessments of passive Instagram use. In addition, one participant was excluded because no graph could be computed, since this participant's passive Instagram use was constant across assessments.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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