Associations Between Social Media Use and Healthy Adolescent Development - Project Summary/Abstract
Nearly all US adolescents use social media (SM), and nearly half report almost constant use. Adolescence is
marked by emotional intensity, difficulties regulating emotions, and increased risk for psychopathologies like
depression. Despite this, due to mixed findings in the literature, little is known about the effects of SM use (SMU)
on healthy adolescent emotional development. One reason for inconclusive results could be failure to account
for different ways adolescents engage in SMU, which could lead to varied outcomes. Additionally, no studies
have examined SMU effects on emotion in both controlled lab settings and real-life contexts, nor have they
considered objective indicators like physiological reactivity. This lack of nuance hinders understanding of how
specific SMU activities impact adolescent emotions generally (when effects are experimentally manipulated) and
during daily life. The proposed investigation aims to untangle the positive and negative emotional effects of SMU
in adolescents using a multimethod approach. Specifically, it seeks to examine how distinct SMU types identified
in my prior research affect adolescents in the moment, how they are used for emotion regulation, and their
association with depressive symptoms. With funds from a parent grant, participants aged 13-17 (N=145) will be
recruited from the community. Participants will first undergo a lab-based SMU experiment, engaging in one of
four SMU types at a time: Belief- (e.g., sharing negative opinions), comparison- (e.g., body comparison), image
(e.g., monitoring "likes"), and consumption-based (e.g., watching videos) SMU. Physiological indicators of
emotion will be recorded alongside self-report measures of emotion. These findings will provide insight into how
each SMU type makes adolescents feel, both objectively (physiological indicators of stress or regulation) and
subjectively. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) will be used in the week following the experiment, where
participants will report their emotions, extent of engagement in each SMU type, and to what extent they engaged
in each type to feel better or worse. This approach will elucidate how SMU types predict adolescent emotions
and are used to influence their emotions in daily life. Furthermore, self-report measures will be employed to
examine the association between weekly engagement in each SMU type and depressive symptoms, revealing
how habitual SMU affects adolescent emotional wellbeing. By taking a nuanced approach to measuring the
emotional effects of specific SMU types, this study holds promise to inform novel interventions that encourage
healthy adolescent SMU habits. The research aims to achieve several training goals, including expertise in
physiological assessment, honing EMA methodological and analytic skills, applying digital emotion regulation
theory in adolescents, and advancing knowledge in adolescent mental health. The training team assembled to
assist in achieving these goals has substantial expertise in emotion and mental health, EMA assessment,
adolescent emotional development, and physiological assessment. With their support, I will develop the skills
needed to foster my research program and career ambitions to become a NIH-funded academic researcher.
