Social Media, Depressive Symptoms and Well-Being in Early Adolescence. The Moderating Role of Emotional Self-Efficacy and Gender.

Emanuela Calandri,Luca Rollé,Federica Graziano

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.660740

Abstract

The study of the psychological effects of social media use on adolescents’ adjustment has long been the focus of psychological research, but results are still inconclusive. In particular, there is a lack of research on the positive and negative developmental outcomes and on possible moderating variables, especially concerning early adolescence. To fill these gaps in literature, the present study longitudinally investigated the relationships between social media use, depressive symptoms, affective well-being and life satisfaction, as well as the moderating role of emotional self-efficacy and gender. The study involved 336 Italian early adolescents (mean age = 13, sd = 0.3; 48% girls) who completed an anonymous self-report questionnaire twice within a year. Main results showed that higher social media use was related to higher depressive symptoms, lower affective well-being and lower life satisfaction among girls with lower emotional self-efficacy. Conversely, high social media use was related to higher affective well-being and higher life satisfaction for girls with higher emotional self-efficacy. Results are discussed in relation to their implications for risk prevention and health promotion among early adolescents. In particular, our results suggest that promoting emotional self-efficacy can be very helpful in making the use of social media an opportunity for well-being and life satisfaction rather than a developmental risk.

Highlights

The use of social media has grown exponentially in recent years
Social media use can have a positive effect on friendships provided certain conditions are met; in particular, the communication should involve known friends, not strangers, the activities on social media must have goals that go beyond mere entertainment and recreational purposes, and adolescents should be successful at integrating online disclosure into offline peer interactions (Davis, 2012, 2013)
The role of emotion regulation has been generally studied in relation to the problematic use of the Internet in adolescence and studies showed that high levels of social and emotional competencies were related to less technology abuse (Nasaescu et al, 2018) and the ability to regulate and managing emotions can contrast a problematic use of the Internet among adolescents (Bruno et al, 2014; Pace et al, 2019). These studies did not consider the use of social media, nor were focused on early adolescents. To fill this gap in the literature, we focused on the relationships between social media use, emotional self-efficacy and developmental outcomes among early adolescents

Summary

Introduction

The use of social media has grown exponentially in recent years. Young people are starting their lives on social networks at an increasingly early age, often before the legal age for accessing social networking sites (13 years of age is the minimum age required by most social media services to access and use their services) (Mascheroni and Ólafsson, 2018; IARD, 2019). Social media are very attractive to early adolescents and adolescents because they fulfill some of the main developmental tasks of this age, primarily the need for social interaction with peers (Davis, 2012, 2013; Schwartz, 2012) and identity management, showing the positive aspects of oneself and hiding the negative ones (Uhls et al, 2017). Through social media, they can Social Media in Early Adolescence consolidate their sense of belonging to the peer group and defining their identity through a self-disclosure process that is facilitated by the mediation of the device, as well as by the asynchronicity and accessibility of online communication (Donoso and Ribbens, 2010; Valkenburg and Peter, 2011). Social media use can have a positive effect on friendships provided certain conditions are met; in particular, the communication should involve known friends, not strangers, the activities on social media must have goals that go beyond mere entertainment and recreational purposes, and adolescents should be successful at integrating online disclosure into offline peer interactions (Davis, 2012, 2013)

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