The Double-edged Sword of Digital Media Use and Social Anxiety in Adolescence: Understanding When, How, and for Whom Harm and Benefits Occur - PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Social anxiety (SA) is highly impairing and increases adolescents’ risk for depression, substance abuse, and sui- cidality. SA peaks in adolescence, when sensitivity to social evaluation also increases. SA symptoms have risen alongside widespread digital media use (DMU; e.g., social media, texting) in recent decades, raising questions about DMU’s role in SA that remain unanswered due to limitations in previous research (e.g., focus on screen- time, limited data on youth SA). Theory and preliminary evidence suggest that DMU can have both harmful and beneficial effects, and that individual differences influence susceptibility to these effects on anxiety. Thus, it is critical to identify which aspects of DMU are most impactful and which adolescents are most susceptible to their effects. Conceptualizing DMU through the RDoC constructs of social threat and reward may be particu- larly informative, as youth with SA are highly sensitive to peer-related threats and rewards. Given that digital platforms have become a central context for peer interaction, understanding how digital experiences of social threat and reward contribute to SA is essential yet understudied. Adolescents (N=175; ages 13–17) with varying levels of SA (75% elevated) will complete 16 days of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) of digital social threat and reward experiences and a novel Digital Media Rewind Task that captures visually-cued ratings of social threat and reward experience during an immediate playback of a DMU session. Guided by a differential susceptibility framework, we will also examine whether neural sensitivity to social evaluation (acceptance/re- jection), assessed with the Chatroom Interact Task and a new task (Tangle) simulating modern social media, heightens susceptibility to the effects of DMU on SA. EMA will also assess daily face-to-face social threat expe- riences as an additional susceptibility factor. Momentary and daily SA reports will be collected via EMA, with current SA severity also assessed at baseline and every 3 months over 18 months. Experiencing more digital social threat (e.g., perceived negative evaluation, comparative experiences [social comparison, fear of missing out], appearance-preoccupation, status orientation [digital status seeking and approval anxiety], and availabil- ity stress) are expected to be linked to increased momentary, baseline, and growth in SA, except for using digi- tal media to avoid face-to-face interactions which is expected to be associated with decreased momentary but increased longer-term SA. Digital social reward experiences (e.g. belongingness, online-only friendship) are expected to be associated with momentary reductions in SA, but evidence is mixed for longer-term impacts, with the possibility that they may be paradoxically associated with increases in SA over the longer-term (e.g., by displacing face-to-face interactions or reinforcing avoidance). We also hypothesize that digital social threat will be more strongly linked to SA when youth also show heightened neural sensitivity to social evaluation (re- jection and acceptance) in affective salience network brain regions, or greater face-to-face social threat. We will also explore the role of these factors in moderating the effects of digital social reward experiences on SA.
