Suchergebnisse

During the COVID‐19 pandemic, some ways of using social media—such as directly communicating with friends—may have helped adolescents thrive. We examined longitudinal associations between high school adolescents' social media use and gratitude across a 15‐month period before and during the pandemic (n = 704, Mage = 15.10; 52% girls). The trajectories of gratitude and the importance of social media for meaningful conversations with friends—but not frequency of social media use—were positively associated over time. At the within‐person level, gratitude predicted increased importance of social media for meaningful conversations, but not vice‐versa. Findings suggest that gratitude may be associated with and may motivate using social media to foster social connection, but may not increase overall social media use.

AbstractOnline appearance preoccupation may put adolescents at risk of developing mental health challenges, perhaps especially during early-to-middle adolescence. A random intercept cross-lagged panel model assessed within-person associations between appearance-related social media consciousness and depressive symptoms over three time-points with three months between waves. The sample (n = 1594) included U.S. adolescents aged 11–15 (Mage = 13; 47% girls, 46% boys, 7% another gender; 37% Latine, 33% White, 18% Black, 7% Asian). Within-person increases in appearance-related social media consciousness were associated with subsequent increases in depressive symptoms, but not vice versa. There was no evidence of gender differences and results were robust to controlling for both time on social media and offline self-objectification. Thus, online appearance concerns precede mental health challenges during early and middle adolescence.