Intraindividual associations between active social media use, exhaustion, and bedtime vary according to age-A longitudinal study across adolescence.

INTRODUCTION: The majority of adolescents engage with others online, and using social media is one of their top activities. However, there is little longitudinal evidence addressing whether active social media use is associated with study-related emotional exhaustion or delayed bedtime at the individual level of development during adolescence. METHOD: A 6-year longitudinal survey study (N = 426, female, 65.7%) was conducted (2014-2019) in Finland when the participants were 13-19 years old. Utilizing a Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Model, this study focused specifically on longitudinal within-person effects. RESULTS: No clear patterns between increased active social media use, increased emotional exhaustion, and delayed bedtime were found; however, the associations varied across the years of adolescence: active social media use and delayed bedtime were only associated in early adolescence; active social media use and emotional exhaustion were associated in both middle and late adolescence. CONCLUSIONS: Intraindividual relations between adolescents' reported active social media use, emotional exhaustion, and sleeping habits are small, inconsistent, and vary according to age. Therefore, future research should focus on additional longitudinal studies to examine the specific practices of social media use during the different developmental stages of at-risk individuals.

Social Media Use and Depressive Symptoms-A Longitudinal Study from Early to Late Adolescence.

An increasing number of studies have addressed how adolescents' social media use is associated with depressive symptoms. However, few studies have examined whether these links occur longitudinally across adolescence when examined at the individual level of development. This study investigated the within-person effects between active social media use and depressive symptoms using a five-wave longitudinal dataset gathered from 2891 Finnish adolescents (42.7% male, age range 13-19 years). Sensitivity analysis was conducted, adjusting for gender and family financial status. The results indicate that depressive symptoms predicted small increases in active social media use during both early and late adolescence, whereas no evidence of the reverse relationship was found. Yet, the associations were very small, statistically weak, and somewhat inconsistent over time. The results provide support for the growing notion that the previously reported direct links between social media use and depressive symptoms might be exaggerated. Based on these findings, we suggest that the impact of social media on adolescents' well-being should be approached through methodological assumptions that focus on individual-level development.