Tuesday, April 1, 2025
4/1/2025
Social Comparison on Social Media, Depressive Symptoms, and Body Dissatisfaction among Adolescents - PROJECT SUMMARY Social media (SM) has played an increasingly prominent role in adolescents’ daily lives over the past decade, notably coinciding with increased population prevalence of major depressive disorder and eating disorders among adolescents. Correlational research consistently links greater time spent on SM with depressive symptoms and body dissatisfaction, which are prevalent and distressing mental health symptoms that can develop into psychopathology. Social comparison may be one central mechanism explaining associations of SM use with depressive symptoms and body dissatisfaction. Adolescents may compare themselves to idealized versions of others on SM, ruminate (i.e., perseverate on self-relevant thoughts) on the discrepancy between their real and ideal selves, and feel dissatisfied with their lives and bodies as a result. Previous research has been mostly limited to cross-sectional investigations of social comparison on a single SM platform, with SM use measured simply in terms of time spent using SM. While SM use may cause depressive symptoms and body dissatisfaction, experiencing mental health symptoms may also cause specific SM activities known to decrease well-being, such as passive scrolling and comparison to distant acquaintances or strangers. Individual characteristics (e.g., personality traits, sociodemographic characteristics) may be risk or protective factors influencing reciprocal relationships between SM use and mental health symptoms. Nuanced measures of SM use and correlates of use that move beyond “time spent on SM” are needed to understand which specific SM activities (e.g., active vs. passive use, viewing content from friends vs. strangers) put adolescents at greatest risk for mental health symptoms, so that these factors can be targeted in future prevention and intervention campaigns. This proposal will examine bidirectional influences of adolescents’ SM activity and individual characteristics on depressive symptoms and body dissatisfaction through the lens of social comparison theory. In this longitudinal observational study, N=120 U.S. adolescents aged 13-18 who report daily SM use will be recruited for an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) study with two 14-day EMA bursts over 2 months. Using a smartphone app, participants will be prompted to complete 2 randomly scheduled surveys each day to: a) send screenshots depicting recent SM activity that prompted social comparison, b) respond to survey items to provide context for the screenshots, and c) report recent social comparisons, depressive symptoms, and body dissatisfaction. Specific aims are to: 1) characterize SM activity that prompts social comparison among adolescents; 2) examine within-day and day-to-day associations between SM activity, social comparison intensity, and mental health symptoms, and 3) identify individual characteristics most strongly associated with SM activity and mental health symptoms. This proposal will identify risk and protective factors linking SM use to mental health symptoms, which may serve as modifiable targets in future intervention development. This research is urgently needed to understand how the modern SM environment affects adolescents’ mental health and who is most at risk.
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