Deprivation's role in adolescent social media use and its links to life satisfaction

Kurten, Sebastian, Ghai, Sakshi, Odgers, Candice, Kievit, Rogier A. and Orben, Amy (2025) Deprivation's role in adolescent social media use and its links to life satisfaction. Computers in Human Behavior, 165. ISSN 0747-5632

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Abstract

Adolescents spend more time on social media than ever, making it necessary to understand the impact of social media use on their well-being. A largely unexplored, but potentially important, risk factor which may moderate effects of social media on well-being is material deprivation. Using 10-wave longitudinal data from 23,155 adolescents collected between 2009 and 2019, we test whether adolescents who spend more time on social media report lower levels of well-being, and whether differences in deprivation are associated with heightened sensitivity to positive or negative effects of their social media use. We find that deprived adolescents have less access to social media. However, those adolescents from deprived households who do have social media access spend slightly more time using it. Although we find that deprived adolescents are less satisfied with their lives, deprivation does not seem to affect the longitudinal link from time spent on social media to life satisfaction.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2024 The Authors
Divisions:	Psychological and Behavioural Science
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman H Social Sciences > HM Sociology B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Date Deposited:	07 Jan 2025 10:15
Last Modified:	14 Jan 2025 09:00
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/126594

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