Bidirectional Associations of Adolescents’ Momentary Social Media Use and Negative Emotions

Abstract

Public discourse and empirical studies have predominantly focused on the negative repercussions of social media on adolescents’ mental health. However, pervasive social media use is a relatively new phenomenon—its apparent harms have been widely accepted before sufficient longitudinal and experimental research has been conducted. The present study used an intensive longitudinal design (four assessments/day × 14 days; N = 154 12- to 15-year-olds (M_age = 13.47, SD = 0.58); N = 6,240 valid measurement occasions) to test the directionality of social media–negative emotion links in early adolescence, accounting for the type of social media usage (i.e., browsing vs. posting). The significance of effects depended on social media type: browsing predicted higher-than-usual negative emotions hours later, whereas no significant directional effects emerged for posting. The browsing effect was small but held after controlling for prior levels of negative emotions. It did not replicate concurrently, underscoring the importance of process-oriented designs with mental health symptoms tested shortly after passive social media usage. The results partially support the active-passive hypothesis, which singles out passively engaging with others’ curated social media content as most detrimental to mental health. Nonetheless, the small browsing effect and overall null-leaning pattern of effects imply that mediators and moderators are needed to further understand when using social media is problematic, beneficial, or neither.