Stimulating citizenship or expanding entertainment? The effect of Facebook on adolescent participation

Over the past decade, Internet and politics scholarship has been concerned with the effects of the Internet on forms of civic and political participation. Recent research has moved on to examine the effects of social networking sites like Facebook. Although past studies have generally found positive – albeit weak or moderate – relationships between social networking sites use and civic and political participation, reliance on cross-sectional surveys has not produced conclusive evidence of the direction of causality. We use a two-wave panel survey of 15- and 16-year-olds to examine how Facebook use affects various forms of political and non-political entertainment-oriented participation (both online and offline). We find that Facebook use is positively related to civic and entertainment-oriented, but not to online or offline political, participation. Further analysis using structural equation modelling shows that prior levels of civic participation have a stronger effect on Facebook use than Facebook use has on civic participation. Facebook use only leads clearly to entertainment-oriented participation. The implications of these findings are discussed.

The study found a "positive relationship between Facebook use and civic and entertainment-oriented forms of participation, but not for online and offline political participation. The results also show that there is a positive relationship between the number of Facebook friends and civic participation and between the time one spends on Facebook and the use of entertainment-oriented participation. SNS have a much stronger civic than political effect on adolescent participatory behaviour. With respect to how SNS use and participation are intertwined, Facebook use does not lead to more civic participation over time, rather, civic particiation leads to Facebook use. Cautiousness is justified. One should be aware that despite positive correlations, causal relationships between participation and Facebook do not always run in the same direction and have the same significance. Indeed, although Facebook use is positively associated with civic engagement, it does not create it; rather, previous engagement patterns lead to more Facebook use. Yet, just because our analyses show that Facebook does not affect political and civic participation, this does not mean that Facebook, or SNS in general, is irrelevant for politics. Several studies have highlighted the importance of Facebook in election campaigns (Bond et al., 2012; Dimitrova et al., 2014), and have provided evidence that it may affect adults’ political knowledge, interest or other politically relevant attitudes." (Theocharis & Quintelier, 2016, pp. 829-830)