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oai:keep.lib.asu.edu:node-1993562025-02-20T22:01:17Zoai_pmh:alloai_pmh:repo_items

199356 https://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.2.N.199356 http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0 2024-12 49 pages Le, Alyssa Lemery-Chalfant, Kathryn Clifford, Sierra Barrett, The Honors College Department of Psychology School of Life Sciences Text A Pew Research Center Survey of 13-to-17-year-olds found that a third of adolescents used at least one of the five popular social media platforms (YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook) “almost constantly” (Anderson et al., 2023). Higher social media use (SMU) predicts poor mental health, but little is known about whether mental health symptoms in early adolescence predict later social media use (Twenge & Campbell, 2018; Riehm et al., 2019), or whether parental control and involvement moderate these relations. We examined the interaction between depressive, anxious, externalizing, and ADHD symptoms and two types of parenting in relation to SMU cross-sectionally and longitudinally: active mediation (a positive approach to parenting that establishes open communication and guidance in their child’s online activities) and restrictive parenting (strict rules and limitations on the child’s access to online content). We hypothesized that greater symptoms and higher restrictive parenting would relate to higher SMU, while active mediation would buffer the links between symptoms and SMU. Participants were an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample set of twins studied longitudinally from age 11 to 13 and their primary caregivers (PC) who enrolled in an ongoing study based in the southwestern U.S. To measure child mental health, we mean composited twin-report (age 11: Berkeley Puppet Interview; age 13: Health and Behavior Questionnaire [HBQ]; αs>.77) and PC-report (HBQ; α>.73) at ages 11 and 13. Twin-report parental mediation (α=.88) and restriction (α=.82) of SMU, and parent-report (α=.88 and .74, respectively) were measured at age 13 using an adapted 2010 version of the EU Kids Online parent questionnaire, and mean composited across reporter. Twins reported on their SMU via The Media and Technology Usage Scale in their surveys. Objectively-measured time spent on social media across a 7-day study week was scraped from twin’ devices after midnight per 24-hour period using an app created for the study, summed across social media apps, and mean-composited across days of the study week (Mdays=6.39). Mixed model regressions controlling for twin interdependence revealed that concurrent restrictive parenting, depression, and externalizing were associated with higher SMU, controlling for age, sex, race, socioeconomic status, pubertal status, and survey format. Parental active mediation buffered the association between concurrent ADHD and objective SMU, however, exacerbated the association between longitudinal externalizing symptoms and subjective SMU. Parental restriction interacted with both depression and anxiety in predicting SMU two years later, such that youth with higher mental health problems and higher parental restrictions used less social media. Overall, restrictive parenting was related to higher SMU, which may be due to restriction promoting higher SMU or to parents restricting more when children overuse media. However, restrictive parenting also interacted with depression and anxiety, with symptoms associated with higher SMU only when restrictive parenting was low. Similarly, active mediation was associated with lower SMU for adolescents with ADHD at age 13. In contrast, active mediation was related to higher subjective SMU for adolescents expressing externalizing symptoms at age 11. Research often assumes SMU causes psychopathology, but our findings suggest that in some contexts, symptoms are also a risk factor for SMU, and that the effectiveness of parenting strategies relating to SMU depends on adolescents’ own mental health. Future studies should consider other dimensions of parenting that may be protective. Mental Health Depression Anxiety ADHD Externalizing Symptoms Parenting Restrictive Parenting Active Mediation Parenting Social Media Mental Health Symptoms as Risk Factors for Adolescent Social Media Use: The Buffering Role of Active Mediation Parenting