Depression as a Predictor of Facebook Surveillance and Envy

Abstract

Abstract. Prior research has shown an association between Facebook users’ likelihood of engaging in social surveillance (i.e., browsing through friends’ postings without directly interacting with them), their experience of envy, and their depressive symptoms. Yet the directionality and duration of this effect are unclear. Drawing on the stress generation hypothesis, we postulate that depression increases Facebook surveillance and envy, which may increase depression over time. Using a cross-lagged longitudinal design with two waves spaced 1 year apart, we find that, as expected, depression was associated with more Facebook surveillance and more envy, both initially and 1 year later. However, neither Facebook surveillance nor envy at Time 1 increased depression at Time 2. Instead, depression predicted envy, and envy predicted Facebook surveillance over time. The results show the utility of the stress generation hypothesis in a social media context and have implications for Facebook users’ psychological well-being.

The Impact of Internet and Social Media Use on Well-Being: A Longitudinal Analysis of Adolescents Across Nine Years

“…If this is true, then the measure of SNS use in the present study should be more precise than the assessment of weekly hours spent using the Internet and TV which might have been an alternative way of measuring use. A comparison with previous research shows that studies using similar single-items measures with similar test-retest reliability (range of correlations between adjacent measurement occasions ranged from r¼.311-.437 for Internet use and r¼.344-.548 for SNS use in the present study) found effects of SNS or Internet use on subjective well-being in some cases (Kraut et al, 1998;Schmuck et al, 2019), but not in others (Kraut et al, 2002;Scherr et al, 2019). Therefore, it is unlikely that the present findings on media effects are due to the specific measurement of media use.…”

“…Unlike these findings, other longitudinal studies found no effect of SNS use on subjective wellbeing. For instance, research found no effect of SNS use on changes in depressive symptomatology among adolescents over six (Ferguson, Munoz, Garza, & Galindo, 2014) or 12 months (Scherr, Toma, & Schuster, 2019).…”

“…While conflicts among friends are social stressors that reduce adolescents' well-being social bonding with friends supports well-being (Dumont & Provost, 1999). Most studies investigating the impact of Internet or SNS use did not account for these important determinants of subjective well-being (e.g., Scherr et al, 2019;Van den Eijnden & Meerkerk, 2008; but see Burke & Kraut, 2016 who study the role of critical life events). Some studies demonstrated that online social contacts with friends increased well-being among teenagers (Valkenburg et al, 2006).…”

Does time spent using social media impact mental health?: An eight year longitudinal study

“…There have been a few longitudinal studies to examine associations between time spent using social media and mental health, with again the results being mixed depending on the study. In some research, social media predicted higher levels of mental health in the future (Coyne, Padilla, Holmgren, & Stockdale, 2019;Vannucci, Flannery, & Ohannessian, 2017), while in others, mental health predicted future social media use (Scherr, Toma, & Schuster, 2018). Additionally, a number of studies have found bi-directional longitudinal relationships between social media and mental health (Frison & Eggermont, 2017;Houghton et al, 2018;Nesi, Miller, & Prinstein, 2017).…”

Social Media Use and Depressive Symptoms—A Longitudinal Study from Early to Late Adolescence

“…However, longitudinal evidence regarding the direction of effects remains inconsistent. Other researchers have found a directional relationship from depressive symptoms to subsequent social media use [ 30 ] and some studies have reported bi-directional effects, suggesting that depressive symptoms can be both a result and a cause of the time adolescents spend on social media [ 31 , 32 ]. Yet, some longitudinal studies have not found significant associations [ 33 , 34 ].…”