Abstract
Literature concerning the relationship between social media use and wellbeing is inconsistent in its findings, and most research has focused on time spent on social media rather than on what emerging adults do there, with whom and why. Here, we investigated whether momentary social stress affects emerging adults’ social media use, and whether this social media use relates to subsequent changes in wellbeing. We implemented a multi-method paradigm utilising objective and self-report data to investigate how social stress relates to how (much) and why emerging adults use social media. We report on findings based on 114 17–25-year-old emerging adults recruited on university campus. Our findings suggest that social stress does not affect adolescents’ subsequent social media use and that there is no relationship between social media use after stress and changes in momentary wellbeing. Our work illustrates the need for detailed approaches in social media and psychological wellbeing research.
Highlights
In recent years, youth wellbeing has seen an alarming decrease, with over one in five adolescents reporting feelings of stress, anxiety and depression (Office for National Statistics, 2017)
Using a novel user-centric approach, we aimed to determine whether changes in wellbeing due to momentary social stress lead to differences in social media use, and whether subsequent social media use relates to improvements in momentary wellbeing
To determine whether stress levels prior to coming into the lab may have interacted with the stress manipulation, stress score was included as a moderator in the manipulation check
Summary
Youth wellbeing has seen an alarming decrease, with over one in five adolescents reporting feelings of stress, anxiety and depression (Office for National Statistics, 2017). The co-occurrence of these two trends has sparked the suggestion by some that the wellbeing and social media trends may be related and that social media may contribute to the decrease in mental health among youth (Tromholt, 2016; Twenge, 2017; Verduyn et al, 2017; Barr, 2019). Much work has already been directed at social media and its effects on wellbeing, the field is still characterised by inconsistent findings and methodological shortcomings (Orben et al, 2019; Orben, 2020). Little attention has been given to the possibility that youth’s social media use might be affected by their momentary affective wellbeing, for instance when coping with stress, reversing the causal arrow. Using a novel user-centric approach, we aimed to determine whether changes in wellbeing due to momentary social stress lead to differences in social media use, and whether subsequent social media use relates to improvements in momentary wellbeing
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