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On a daily basis, individuals between 12 and 25 years of age engage with their mobile devices for many hours. Social Media Use (SMU) has important implications for the social life of younger individuals in particular. However, measuring SMU and its effects often poses challenges to researchers. In this exploratory study, we focus on some of these challenges, by addressing how plurality in the measurement and age-specific characteristics of SMU can influence its relationship with measures of subjective mental health (MH). We conducted a survey among a nationally representative sample of Dutch adolescents and young adults ( N = 3,669). Using these data, we show that measures of SMU show little similarity with each other, and that age-group differences underlie SMU. Similar to the small associations previously shown in social media-effects research, we also find some evidence that greater SMU associates to drops and to increases in MH. Albeit nuanced, associations between SMU and MH were found to be characterized by both linear and quadratic functions. These findings bear implications for the level of association between different measures of SMU and its theorized relationship with other dependent variables of interest in media-effects research.

Developmental changes during adolescence may make youth susceptible to violent media effects. Two studies with male adolescents (N1 = 241; N2 = 161; aged 12–17) examined how habitual and short‐term violent video gaming may affect emotion recognition and inhibitory control. We found that not habitual exposure to violent video games, but to antisocial media content predicted worse emotion recognition. Furthermore, higher habitual exposure to violent games predicted better inhibitory control over emotional stimuli in a stop signal task. However, short‐term causal effects of violent gameplay on adolescents were not found. While these results do not indicate a negative impact of violent video games on young players, future research may further investigate possible effects of antisocial media content on adolescents.

An ability to accurately recognize negative emotions in others can initiate pro-social behavior and prevent anti-social actions. Thus, it remains of an interest of scholars studying effects of violent video games. While exposure to such games was linked to slower emotion recognition, the evidence regarding accuracy of emotion recognition among players of violent games is weak and inconsistent. The present research investigated the relationship between violent video game exposure (VVGE) and accuracy of negative emotion recognition. We assessed the level of self-reported VVGE in hours per day and the accuracy of the recognition using the Facial Expressions Matching Test. The results, with adolescents (Study 1; N = 67) and with adults (Study 2; N = 151), showed that VVGE was negatively related to accurate recognition of negative emotion expressions, even if controlled for age, gender, and trait empathy, but no causal direction could be assessed. In line with the violent media desensitization model, our findings suggest that higher self-reported VVGE relates to lower recognition of negative emotional expressions of other people. On the one hand, such lower recognition of negative emotions may underlie inaccurate reactions in real-life social situations. On the other hand, lower sensitivity to social cues may help players to better focus on their performance in a violent game.

The possible effects of violent video gameplay on adolescents are intensely debated, highlighting the difficulties in the violent media research. The current dissertation posits that media may sort effects in more subtle and less direct ways than thus far studied. It employed a novel perspective to investigate the possible effects of violent video games on adolescents’ social outcomes, by looking beyond aggression and by focusing on four social-cognitive skills: emotion recognition, inhibitory control, perspective-taking, and empathy for pain. The development of these skills is particularly salient during early adolescence. If such development would be disturbed by exposure to violent video games, it may underlie antisocial behavior. Integration of insights from media psychology, developmental psychology, and neuroscience led to an expectation that exposure to violent video games would be negatively related to and would have a negative impact on the four social-cognitive skills. To investigate how exposure to violent video games may influence these social-cognitive skills, we took a multi-level approach, by investigating possible effects on a self-report level (questionnaires), a behavioral level (reaction times), and a brain level (ERP responses). To test our hypotheses, we performed four studies employing various study designs: correlational, experimental, and quasi-experimental in different adolescent samples and in one young adult sample. The outcomes of this project indicated that the possible impact of violent video game exposure on adolescents’ social-cognitive skills is limited and may be observed only in terms of short-term effects: less accurate perspective-taking and lower empathy for pain reactions measured immediately after the game. Further, habitual exposure to violent video games was related to lower empathy for pain reactions, but only in young adults, not in adolescents. Contrary to our expectations, more frequent habitual exposure to violent video games was related to better inhibitory control over emotional expressions in adolescents. Moreover, we also tested the possible effects of exposure to antisocial content in other media, beyond video games, and found that it was related to less accurate emotion recognition and lower empathy for pain reactions in adolescents. While this project brings new insights which could enrich scientific and public debates on violent media effects on youth, future longitudinal studies are needed to better understand possible ‘traces’ of violent video games in adolescent development, considering individual developmental trajectories and differences between young people.