Styles of social media usage and their relationship with mental wellbeing
Creators: name: Shaw, Daniel
name: Pennington, Charlotte Rebecca
name: Murray, Evelyn
Publisher: name: OSF Registries
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
subject: Psychology
subject: FOS: Psychology
subject: active social media
subject: active versus passive social media use
subject: cyberpsychology
subject: depression
subject: low mood
subject: wellbeing

description: Mental illness in adolescence has increased dramatically over the past few decades. In 2022, 22% of young people aged 17-24 had a probable mental disorder, an increase from 1 in 10 in 2017 to 1 in 6 in 2020 (NHS Digital, 2022). This has occurred alongside a rapid upsurge in the usage of social media by adolescents; 16-to 24-year-olds in the UK have the highest prevalence of social media user with 51% reporting that they spend too much time online (Ofcom, 2023). Such trends have sparked an explosion of research into the effects of social media usage on adolescent mental health, but a recent government inquiry concluded that there is a lack of high-quality research in this area. This reflects three primary limitations of existing research: an absence of longitudinal, causal studies, a lack of consideration for how (rather than how much) adolescents use social media, and little research on individual differences in adolescent vulnerability (Prinstein et al., 2020). The few studies that have employed (quasi)experimental methods to assess causality report increased psychological wellbeing (e.g., reduced depression) following the deactivation of social media accounts (Allcott et al., 2020), or an increase in adolescents’ depressive symptoms following the introduction of Facebook (Braghieri et al., 2022). This focus on usage frequency is overly simplistic, however, ignoring the range of behaviours exhibited on social media (Shaw et al., 2023). In the current study, we will identify how distinct styles of social media usage (i.e., interactive, reactive, passive) are related to adolescent mood and mental wellbeing over a period of 3-days, and whether this is moderated by person-specific factors, such as trait depressive tendencies. 
Objective 1: Determine the effect of interactive, reactive, and passive social media usage on adolescent wellbeing. We have developed a task – the Social Networking Site Behaviour Task (SNSBT) which classifies distinct styles of social media usage: “interactive” users are most likely to ‘share’ others’ content, “reactive” users express a tendency to ‘like’ than ‘share’ others’ content, and “passive” users tended to scroll through rather than engaging with others’ content (Shaw et al., 2022). In a sample of ~230 participants, we will examine how these styles of usage are related to adolescent wellbeing through a measure of state (momentary) mood (I-PANAT-SF) over a period of three-days. We predict that more interactive usage will be related to greater psychological wellbeing compared to more reactive and passive usage styles due to bi-directional exchanges fostering a sense of social connectedness and social capital.
Objective 2: Define person characteristics that influence distinct styles of social media usage and moderate their relationship with adolescent wellbeing. Before participants complete the SNSBT on Day 1, they will also complete a measure of trait depression (STAI/D). This will allow us to examine whether the effects of distinct styles of social media usage on state adolescent wellbeing (mood) are further moderated by participant’s stable depressive tendencies. We predict that participants with lower trait depression will engage in more interactive styles of social media usage compared with those with higher trait depression.
Note: Both questionnaires employed in this study are designed for non-clinical research – they cannot be used for diagnostic purposes.