Open AccessSocial Media Use and Adolescents’ Self-Esteem: Heading for a Person-Specific Media Effects Paradigm
Author(s) -
Patti M. Valkenburg,
Ine Beyens,
J. Loes Pouwels,
Irene I. van Driel,
Loes Keijsers
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of communication
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.752
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1460-2466
pISSN - 0021-9916
DOI - 10.1093/joc/jqaa039
Subject(s) - psychology , heading (navigation) , self esteem , structural equation modeling , developmental psychology , test (biology) , social media , social psychology , statistics , paleontology , mathematics , geodesy , biology , geography , political science , law
Eighteen earlier studies have investigated the associations between social media use (SMU) and adolescents’ self-esteem, finding weak effects and inconsistent results. A viable hypothesis for these mixed findings is that the effect of SMU differs from adolescent to adolescent. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a preregistered three-week experience sampling study among 387 adolescents (13–15 years, 54% girls). Each adolescent reported on his/her SMU and self-esteem six times per day (126 assessments per participant; 34,930 in total). Using a person-specific, N = 1 method of analysis (Dynamic Structural Equation Modeling), we found that the majority of adolescents (88%) experienced no or very small effects of SMU on self-esteem (−.10 < β < .10), whereas 4% experienced positive (.10 ≤ β ≤ .17) and 8% negative effects (−.21 ≤ β ≤ −.10). Our results suggest that person-specific effects can no longer be ignored in future media effects theories and research.