Introduction: This systematic review and meta-analysis examined the associations between social media use and risky behaviors during adolescence, and evaluated study characteristics (e.g., sample age, type of social media platform assessed) that may moderate these relationships.Methods: A comprehensive search strategy identified relevant studies from PsycInfo, PubMed, Google Scholar, and Proquest Dissertations and Theses Global. Results:The final sample included 27 independent cross-sectional studies with a total of 67,407 adolescents (M age = 15.5, range: 12.6-18.0 years; 51.7% girls; 57.2% White). Results from random effects models indicated that there were positive, small-to-medium correlations between social media use and engagement in risky behaviors generally (r = 0.21, 95% CI = 0.16-0.25), substance use (r = 0.19, 95% CI = 0.12-0.26), and risky sexual behaviors (r = 0.21, 95% CI = 0.15-0.28). There were an insufficient number of independent samples available to conduct a random effect models for violence-related behaviors (k = 3). Moderator analyses suggested that studies assessing solely early social media platforms (e.g., Facebook/MySpace only) in relation to substance use had smaller effect sizes than substance use studies assessing a broader range of contemporary social media platforms. In addition, younger samples had larger effect sizes for studies focused on social media use and risky sexual behaviors. Conclusions:The positive links identified between social media and risky behaviors during adolescence in this meta-analysis suggest that developmental theories of risk taking would benefit from incorporating the social media context. Longitudinal studies are needed to clarify directionality and make more specific practice and policy recommendations so that social media is a safe place in which adolescents can thrive.Social media has become an important developmental context for adolescents since its advent and widespread societal adoption in the early-to-mid 2000s. The co-construction model (Subrahmanyam, Smahel, & Greenfield, 2006) emphasizes that online and offline contexts within which adolescents are immersed are strongly interconnected. Adolescents, therefore, are hypothesized to bring to the social media context their offline developmental issues related to identity, autonomy, peer relationships, sexuality, and risk taking and sensation seeking (Subrahmanyam et al., 2006). The prominence and significance of social media to adolescents, therefore, likely results from the increasing salience of identity exploration, self-expression, friendships, and peer acceptance that occurs during this

The current study examined relationships between different types of social media platforms used and psychological functioning in a diverse, national U.S. sample of emerging adults (18–22 years). Participants completed surveys online in the spring of 2014. Findings from a path analysis model suggested that individuals who used a higher number of different social media platforms reported more anxiety symptoms, depressive symptoms, total alcohol consumption, and drug use. Facebook use was associated uniquely with depressive symptoms and Snapchat use with substance use. Neither Instagram use nor Twitter use was associated with any measures of psychological functioning. Gender differences also were not observed. Findings highlight the importance of considering the number of different social media platforms used, as well as the specific platform itself, when conceptualizing the relationship between social media use and psychological functioning in emerging adults.