Objective, subjective, and accurate reporting of social media use: No evidence that daily social media use correlates with personality traits, motivational states, or well-being.

Abstract

There is a lively debate on the effects of social media use, shaped by self-reported measurements of social media use. However, selfreports have been shown to suffer from low accuracy compared to logged measures of social media use. Even though it is unclear how problematic that measurement error is for our inferences, many scholars call for the exclusive use of "objective" measures. But if measurement error is not systematic, self-reports will still be informative. In contrast, if there is systematic error, associations between social media use and other variables, including well-being, are likely biased. Here, we report an exploratory 5 day experience sampling study among 96 participants (435 observations) to understand factors that could relate to low accuracy. First, we asked what stable individual differences are related to low accuracy. Second, we explored what daily states relate to accuracy. Third, we explored whether accuracy relates to well-being. Although we did find evidence for a systematic tendency to overestimate social media use, neither individual differences nor daily states were related to that tendency. Accuracy was also unrelated to well-being. Our results suggest that blindly calling for objective measures foregoes a responsibility to understand measurement error in social media use first.

Discrepancies between Objectively Assessed and Self-Reported Daily Social Media Time in the Age of Platform Swinging

“…This study is limited in that data came from sample of first-year students from a single university. However, the sample size exceeded those utilized in previous studies (e.g., Johannes et al, 2021;Junco, 2013), and self-reported daily SM platform use patterns mapped onto national survey data from of 18-24-year-olds (Anderson & Jiang, 2018;Auxier & Anderson, 2021), suggesting that findings may generalize to young adults beyond the current sample. An additional limitation was related to the RescueTime software application used in this study not being compatible with iPhones.…”

“…In recent years, several studies have revisited the issue of selfreport accuracy in the context of SM use, generally replicating two findings with larger samples: reporting inaccuracies are common, and they tend toward the direction of over-reporting (Ernala et al, 2020;Sewall et al, 2020). However, these studies still share substantial limitations with Junco (2013) including the assessment of SM time on a specific electronic device (iPhones; Sewall et al, 2020), a single platform (Facebook; Ernala, et al, 2020), or lumping time on multiple SM platforms together (i.e., total SM time, Johannes et al, 2021;Sewall et al, 2020).…”

“…However, most studies examining these relationships have relied on survey items to retrospectively assess daily or weekly time on a specific SM platform or across all SM used, acknowledging that the accuracy with which young adults are able to self-report these behaviors is unclear. While commonly identified as a study limitation, other recent work has argued that reporting errors in the domain of SM time are likely to be random rather than systematic (Johannes, 2021), and therefore should not be of great concern to the survey researchers asking these questions. Given increasing empirical interest in health-related correlates of SM, the present study employs improved methods to further this debate.…”

Digital well-being in an age of mobile connectivity: An introduction to the Special Issue

“…Theoretically, for example, concerns have grown over lacking conceptualizations of "screen time" (e.g., Kaye et al, 2020), the exclusive focus on between-person effects (e.g., Beyens et al, 2020), and the over-pathologization of media use (e.g., Billieux et al, 2015). These concerns are intertwined with a number of methodological issues, such as the "accuracy crisis" stemming from observed discrepancies between self-reported and logged digital media use (e.g., Parry et al, 2021), and the null or negligible findings found in studies embracing behavioral data (e.g., Johannes et al, 2021) or alternative analytical choices (e.g., Orben & Przybylski, 2019). 2.…”

Experience Sampling Self-Reports of Social Media Use Have Comparable Predictive Validity to Digital Trace Measures

“…However, a recent metaanalysis revealed that self-reported measures typically correlate only modestly with digital trace measures of TSM 11 , so that their convergent validity has become a serious reason for concern. However, except for Sewall et al 12 and Johannes et al 13 , hardly any study has focused on the predictive validity of self-reported measures of TSM, which focuses on the degree to which selfreported TSM and digital trace measures yield comparable effects on certain outcome variables.…”