Adolescents’ Self-Regulation of Social Media Use During the Beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Idiographic Approach

Abstract

Adolescent social media serves a broad range of functions, which may be helpful for some and harmful for others. During the COVID-19 lockdown, social media evolved considerably, occupying an even more central role in adolescents’ lives. This study leverages a new approach to measuring social media use behaviors—passive smartphone sensing. Specifically, we aimed to test if and how adolescents self-regulate their social media use in response to how they feel during and after use. This study followed 19 adolescents for 1 month. Participants completed baseline measures, assessing demographic and clinical characteristics. We used passive smartphone sensing to measure objective social media use behaviors (“screen time” and checking) for a 1-month period. Adolescents also completed daily diary questions on their mood. Analyses took an idiographic (n = 1) approach. Dynamic structural equation models tested daily and next-day relationships between social media use behaviors and mood for each adolescent. Most adolescents (n = 13 of 19) did not self-regulate their social media use in relation to their mood. Most importantly, they did not use it less when they felt more negative mood during use. That said, some adolescents (n = 6) did alter their social media use behaviors depending on their mood. Each adolescent’s pattern of social media use and mood was also qualitatively interpreted within their context of demographic (e.g., experience of holding a minoritized identity) and clinical characteristics (e.g., history of suicidal thoughts and behaviors). These results highlight the next steps for possible intervention points to help adolescents adjust their use patterns to maximize mental health benefits while minimizing possible harm. Findings also begin to develop a template for applying social media use recommendations, while centering the experiences of individual adolescents.