Social Media Use and Adolescent Well-Being: A Narrative Review of Longitudinal Studies

Course-Choi, Jenna; Hammond, Linda

doi:10.1089/cyber.2020.0020

Cited by 46 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 66 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…We emphasize that this evidence is overwhelmingly based on self-reports and refers to between-person correlations, not causation. Based on a recent systematic review (Course-Choi & Hammond, 2021) and additional research, we also note that longitudinal panel studies to date find little to no evidence for positive or negative long-term effects of social media screen time on mental health in general (Orben et al, 2019;Schemer et al, 2020; but see Shakya & Christakis, 2017). However, some longitudinal evidence for negative effects on body image among adolescents exists (Course-Choi & Hammond, 2021).…”

Section: Social Media and Mental Health: The State Of The Fieldmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Another major takeaway from our as well as other reviews (e.g., Course-Choi & Hammond, 2021;Verduyn et al, 2017) is that effect patterns become more complex if research distinguishes not just mental health outcomes but also the types of interactions and messages (i.e., different uses) that users engage with on social media.…”

Section: Social Media and Mental Health: The State Of The Fieldmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…In conclusion, based on the most recent and largest evidence reviews (Appel et al, 2020;Course-Choi & Hammond, 2021;Orben, 2020), concerns over strong negative mental health effects of social media appear to be overblown. Metaanalyses find several (very) small correlations of social media screen time with increased psychopathology (e.g., depressive symptoms), some increased risk (e.g., stress) and some decreased resilience factors (e.g., self-esteem) at the between-person level.…”

Section: Social Media and Mental Health: The State Of The Fieldmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Specifically, several reviews conclude that active social media use is linked to better mental health, while passive use is linked to worse mental health (e.g., Course-Choi & Hammond, 2021;Orben, 2020;Verduyn et al, 2017). Yet, more recent evidence suggests that this conclusion may be premature: a scoping review of studies published after 2017 finds that the effects of active and passive use on mental health are much more heterogeneous, with no clear picture emerging as of yet .…”

Section: Social Media and Mental Health: The State Of The Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Social media and mental health: Reviewing effects on eudaimonic well-being

Meier¹,

Reinecke²

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Do social media affect users’ mental health and well-being? By now, considerable research has addressed this highly contested question. Prior studies have investigated the effects of social media use on hedonic well-being (e.g., affect and life satisfaction), psychopathology (e.g., depressive or anxiety symptoms), or psychosocial risk/resilience factors (e.g., loneliness, stress, self-esteem). Yet, public concern over social media effects often centers on more long-term negative outcomes, which may be better captured by indicators of eudaimonic well-being. Indeed, neglecting the eudaimonic side of well-being may have introduced outcome omission bias, since eudaimonia is both conceptually and empirically distinct from other dimensions of mental health and may be uniquely affected by social media use. Specifically, psychology currently theorizes eudaimonic well-being to be best represented by the experiences of (a) meaningfulness, (b) authenticity, and (c) self-actualization. A research synthesis of how social media use relates to these core indicators of eudaimonia is currently missing, however. We thus present a first narrative review that synthesizes both theoretical and empirical links between three key social media uses (i.e., active, passive, and “screen time”) and eudaimonic well-being. The synthesis shows that while there are indeed several plausible theoretical links, the evidence is too scarce and inconsistent to allow definitive conclusions at this time. We instead give recommendations for how the field can close important gaps by investigating whether social media afford or constrain opportunities to find meaning, live authentically, and grow as a person.

show abstract

Section: Social Media and Mental Health: The State Of The Fieldmentioning

confidence: 92%

Section: Social Media and Mental Health: The State Of The Fieldmentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Social Media and Mental Health: The State Of The Fieldmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Social Media and Mental Health: The State Of The Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Social media and mental health: Reviewing effects on eudaimonic well-being

Meier¹,

Reinecke²

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The past five years have yielded about a dozen reviews and meta-analyses on the associations of social media use (SMU) and components of well-being, such as life satisfaction and happiness. Some of these meta-analyses and reviews focused on adults (Kross et al, 2020;Verduyn et al, 2020;Verduyn et al, 2017), others on adolescents (Course-Choi & Hammond, 2021;Cunningham et al, 2021;Dienlin & Johannes, 2020;Ivie et al, 2020;Odgers & Jensen, 2020), and yet others on both adults and adolescents (Huang, 2017;Liu et al, 2019). In many of these reviews, two types of social media use (SMU) have been conceptualized, active and passive social media use.…”

Section: Time To Abandon the Active-passive Dichotomymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Associations of Active and Passive Social Media Use With Well-being: A Critical Scoping Review

Valkenburg¹,

Driel²,

Beyens³

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A recurring claim in the literature is that “active” social media use (ASMU) leads to increases in well-being, whereas “passive” social media use (PSMU) leads to decreases in well-being. The aim of this scoping review was to investigate the validity of this claim by comparing the results of studies that appeared after the meta-analysis of Liu et al. (2019). We found 27 studies focusing on 85 different associations of ASMU or PSMU with well-being. Results showed that studies used a hodgepodge of operationalizations of ASMU and PSMU. Some mixed up private (e.g., direct messaging) and public (e.g., posting, browsing) ASMU and/or PSMU, which is problematic, because private SMU is more synchronous and intimate than public SMU, which may lead to different effects. The majority of the cross-sectional, virtually all the longitudinal, and most of the experience sampling studies disconfirmed the hypothesized associations of ASMU and PSMU with well-being. Moreover, the experiments revealed that the effects of PSMU depend on the content and sender of the posts. Our results indicate that it is time to abandon the active-passive dichotomy and replace it with a more valid measurement of SMU that takes characteristics of SM content, senders, and receivers into account.

show abstract

The effect of social media use on mental health of college students during the pandemic

Fruehwirth,

Weng,

Perreira

2024

Health Economics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Social media is viewed to be a key contributor to worsening mental health in adolescents, as most recently reflected in a public health advisory by the US Surgeon General. We provide new evidence on the causal effects of social media on mental health of college students during the Covid‐19 pandemic, exploiting unique, longitudinal data collected before the Covid‐19 pandemic began and at two points during the pandemic. We find small insignificant effects of social media 4 months into the pandemic during a period of social distancing, but large statistically significant negative effects 18 months into the pandemic when colleges were mostly back to normal operations. Using rich data on substance use, exercise, sleep, stress, and social support, we find some evidence of substitution away from activities that better support mental health at later stages of the pandemic but not at early stages. We find that the negative effects of social media are mostly concentrated among socially‐isolated students. Both social support and resilience protect students from the negative effects of social media use. Policy implications include regulating social media while also bolstering social support and resilience as important protective factors.

show abstract

Social Media Use and Adolescent Well-Being: A Narrative Review of Longitudinal Studies

Cited by 46 publications

References 66 publications

Social media and mental health: Reviewing effects on eudaimonic well-being

Social media and mental health: Reviewing effects on eudaimonic well-being

The Associations of Active and Passive Social Media Use With Well-being: A Critical Scoping Review

The effect of social media use on mental health of college students during the pandemic

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About