Social media use and friendship closeness in adolescents’ daily lives: An experience sampling study.
Keywords
adolescence
ambulatory assessment
friendship quality
social network site use (SNS use)
individual differences
Publication details
| Year: | 2021 |
| DOI: | 10.1037/dev0001148 |
| Issued: | 2021 |
| Language: | English |
| Volume: | 57 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Start Page: | 309 |
| End Page: | 323 |
| Editors: | |
| Authors: | Pouwels J.; Valkenburg P.; Beyens I.; van Driel I.; Keijsers L. |
| Type: | Journal article |
| Journal: | Developmental Psychology |
| Publisher: | American Psychological Association (APA) |
| Topics: | Social mediation; Wellbeing |
| Sample: | "The present study used data from the first ESM waveof this project. The sample consisted of 387 students (54% girls)with a mean age of 14.11 years (SD.69). Students were enrolledin different educational tracks: 44% were in lower prevocationalsecondary education, 31% in intermediate general secondary edu-cation, and 26% in academic preparatory education. Of all partic-ipants, 96% was born in The Netherlands and self-identified asDutch, 2% was born in another European country, and 2% in acountry outside Europe. The sample was a fairly accurate repre-sentation of this specific area in the Netherlands in terms ofeducation level and ethnic background." (Pouwels et al., 2021, p. 312) |
Abstract
The formation and maintenance of friendship closeness is an important developmental task in adoles-cence. To obtain insight in real-time processes that may underly the development of friendship closenessin middle adolescence, this preregistered experience sampling study [ESM] investigated the effects ofsocial media use on friendship closeness. The study was conducted among 387 adolescents (54% girls;Mage14.11 years; 96% Dutch) from different educational tracks (44% lower prevocational secondaryeducation, 31% intermediate general secondary education, 26% academic preparatory education). Ado-lescents reported six times per day for 3 weeks on their Instagram, WhatsApp, and Snapchat use in theprevious hour and their momentary experiences of friendship closeness (126 assessments; 34,930observations). Multilevel analyses revealed positive between-person associations of friendship closenesswith general WhatsApp use and Instagram use with close friends. In contrast, at the within-person level,we found small negative overall associations of general WhatsApp use and Instagram use (with andwithout close friends) with friendship closeness. However, there was large heterogeneity in the person-specific effect sizes of the within-person associations of social media use with friendship closeness. Forexample, person-specific effect sizes of the association of Instagram use with close friends withfriendship closeness ranged from.745 to.697. These results underline the importance ofacknowledging person-specific effects in developmental and media effect theories.
Outcome
"Using experience sampling data with34,930 observations of 387 participants, we demonstrated that adolescents who used WhatsApp and Instagram with close friends more often than their peers experienced higher levels of friendship closeness. These positive between-person associations were notreplicated at the within-person level. Instead, we found smal lnegative within-person associations between general WhatsApp use and Instagram use and friendship closeness. Thus, overall, the stimulation hypothesis was not supported at the within-person level. However, post hoc analyses indicated sizable individual differences in adolescents’ susceptibility to the effects of social media use on friendship closeness." (Pouwels et al., 2021, p. 318)