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Author Spotlight: Understanding Adolescent Social Adversity Effects on Neurodevelopment in Mice
Published on: March 15, 2024
The effect of social media on well-being differs from adolescent to adolescent
Ine Beyens1, J Loes Pouwels2, Irene I van Driel2
1Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, 1001 NG, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. i.beyens@uva.nl.
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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