Social Media Use & Well-Being: Investigating Effect Consistency and Symmetry Across Three Time Intervals

Abstract

Longitudinal studies allow researchers to investigate the reciprocal associations between media use and well-being. But surprisingly little work has conceptualized the role of time in these associations. The aim of our study was to fill this important void in the literature. In a three-week experience sampling study among 300 adolescents into social media use (SMU) and well-being, we compared social media effects (SMU → well-being) and social media selection effects (well-being → SMU) at hourly, daily, and weekly time intervals. Both social media effects and social media selection effects were consistent across the three different time intervals. Moreover, social media effects and social media selection effects were symmetrical processes, in that they occurred at the same time intervals. We suggest several avenues for future research to enhance our understanding of how (social) media effects and media selection effects evolve at short-term, mid-term, and long-term time intervals.

The Feedback Loop Between Smartphone Usage and Momentary Well-Being: Tackling Methodological Challenges by Combining Ecological Momentary Assessments with Passive Smartphone Data

“…At the same time, our results suggest that the feeling of loneliness may play a considerable role, as it was bidirectionally associated with smartphone usage, with the standardized effect of smartphone usage on subsequent loneliness being twice as large than the reverse. These effects were most pronounced for Social Media use, making our findings consistent with previous research showing that social media use can be associated with negative well-being outcomes (e.g., Verbeij et al, 2023;Verduyn et al, 2021).…”

Day-to-day social interactions online and offline: The interplay between interaction mode, interaction quality, and momentary well-being

“…Upon dissecting this association by the specific modes of interactions in Sample I as an exploratory analysis, we observed that higher levels of momentary well-being were reported after face-to-face, calls, and texting interactions, but not necessarily following video calls and social media interactions (see Supplementary Materials Table Figure S2, for details). While social media interactions pose challenges in conceptual clarification (Hall, 2018), these findings resonate with existing literature on the nuanced relationship between social media use and wellbeing (e.g., Verbeij et al, 2023;Verduyn et al, 2021). The lack of correlation between video call quality and subsequent well-being provokes inquiries into the distinctive nature of video calls.…”

Dynamic or Stable? The Stability of the Effects of Adolescents’ Social Media Use on Psychosocial Functioning

“…The effects of social media use on adolescents' well-being (Beyens et al, 2021;Verbeij et al, 2023;Verbeij et al, 2022a), self-esteem (Valkenburg, Beyens, et al, 2021;Valkenburg, Pouwels, et al, 2021a;Verbeij et al, 2022a), and friendship closeness (Pouwels et al, 2021a(Pouwels et al, , 2021bVerbeij et al, 2022a) have already been examined as part of our previous studies, based on either the first or second ESM study. In the present study, we will extend our previous research by investigating three types of change and stability in social media effects across the two ESM studies (i.e., rank-order stability, mean-level change, and individual-level change.…”