Many studies have found a link between time spent using social media and mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety. However, the existing research is plagued by cross-sectional research and lacks analytic techniques examining individual change over time. The current research involves an 8-year longitudinal study examining the association between time spent using social media and depression and anxiety at the intraindividual level. Participants included 500 adolescents who completed once-yearly questionnaires between the ages of 13 and 20. Results revealed that increased time spent on social media was not associated with increased mental health issues across development when examined at the individual level. Hopefully these results can move the field of research beyond its past focus on screen time.
In this study, we address the communication technologies individuals within romantic relationships are using to communicate with one another, the frequency of use, and the association between the use of these technologies and couple's positive and negative communication. Participants consisted of individuals involved in a serious, committed, heterosexual relationship. The Relationship Evaluation Questionnaire instrument was used to assess a variety of relationship variables. The majority of individuals within the study frequently used cell phones and text messaging to communicate with their partner, with ''expressing affection'' being the most common reason for contact. Younger individuals reported using all forms of media (except for e-mail) more frequently than older participants. Relationship satisfaction did not predict specific use of media but predicted several reasons for media use. Additional analyses revealed that text messaging had the strongest association with individuals' positive and negative communication within their relationships. Specifically, text messaging to express affection, broach potentially confrontational subjects, and to hurt partners were associated with individuals' view of positive and negative communication within their relationship. Implications of the results are discussed.School of Family Life, Brigham Young University, JFSB 2087, Provo, UT 84602 (smcoyne@byu.edu).
Introduction:The current study examined motivations for social networking site use across three years during the transition from late adolescence to emerging adulthood. While research has been conducted examining reasons for social networking site usage and behavior, the clear majority have focused on samples of undergraduate college students and are cross-sectional.Methods: Changes in motivations for using social networking sites were examined in relation to problematic social networking site use and several behavioral and mental health outcomes in a sample of adolescents over three years.Results: Using social networking sites to connect with others was relatively stable over a threeyear period. However, using social networking sites to seek information increased from late adolescence to emerging adulthood and was not related to any negative outcomes across three years. Using social networking sites to alleviate boredom also increased over time. Initial levels of social media use to alleviate boredom were associated with problematic social networking site use, financial stress, anxiety, and empathy at year three. Increases in using social networking sites to socially connect over time was related to problematic social networking site use, anxiety, delinquency, and empathy at year three. Using social networking sites for any reason was not related to depressive symptoms over three years.
Conclusions:The current study supports the growing body of literature suggesting that using social networking sites to alleviate boredom and socially connect, may place individuals at increased risk for developing pathological tendencies and patterns of behavior towards social networking sites.For U.S. adolescents, media use is a full-time job. 95% of U.S. teens have access to a smartphone and 45% report being online almost constantly (Anderson & Jiang, 2018). One major source of adolescents' online activity is social networking sites (SNS; HHS, 2016). Social networking sites have been defined as "a networked communication platform in which participants (1) have uniquely identifiable profiles that consist of user-supplied content, content provided by other users, and/or system-provided data; (2) can publicly articulate connections that can be viewed and traversed by others; and (3) can consume, produce, and/or interact with streams of user-generated content provided by their connections on the site. " (p. 158, Ellison & Boyd, 2013) and include sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. In 2019 85% of U.S. teens report using YouTube, 72% report using Instagram and 69% report using Snapchat (Gramlich, 2019). Social networking site usage accounts for a significant portion of U.S. teens online activities (Anderson & Jiang, 2018). For most teens, using social networking sites is a normative part of growing up in a digital world. Research
Barr et al. Beyond Screen Time exposure in families with young children: measuring attitudes and practices; capturing content and context; measuring short bursts of mobile device usage; and integrating data to capture the complexity of household media usage. We illustrate how each of these challenges can be addressed with preliminary data collected with the CAFE tool and visualized on our dashboard. We conclude with future directions including plans to test reliability, validity, and generalizability of these measures.
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