Causal Effects of Exposure to Social Media on Adolescent Mental Health

接触社交媒体对青少年心理健康的因果影响

• 批准号: 10813917
• 负责人: Kostadin Kushlev
• 金额: $ 35.44万
• 依托单位: GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-09-05 至 2028-07-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10813917
• 关键词: 12 year old; 14 year old; Address; Adolescent; Adult; Affect; Age; Attention; Cellular Phone; Child; Child Rearing; Ethnic Origin; Exhibits; Experimental Designs; Exposure to; Future; Gender; Grain; Hysteria; Image; Individual; Instagram; Intervention; Knowledge; Link; Literature; Machine Learning; Measurement; Measures; Mediating; Mental Health; Neurocognitive Deficit; Outcome; Parents; Participant; Patient Self-Report; Persons; Physical activity; Policy Maker; Population; Race; Randomized; Reporting; Research; Research Personnel; Rewards; Risk Factors; Role; Scientific Advances and Accomplishments; Sleep; Social Interaction; Stimulus; Teenagers; Testing; TikTok; Time; United States; adolescent health; aged; anxiety symptoms; boys; child depression; depressive symptoms; design; experience; experimental study; girls; intersectionality; mobile sensing; psychologic; recruit; sleep quantity; social; social capital; social media; systems research; tool; university student; virtual

Executive Summary Adolescent mental health in the United States has declined precipitously in the past decade. These declines in mental health have coincided with an increase in social media use, especially as accessed on smartphones. Because most existing research is correlational, however, it is unclear whether social media use causally impacts adolescent mental health. We will advance scientific and public knowledge by conducting the first longitudinal field experiment to examine the causal effects of social media on mental health in 11–14-year-olds. We propose a basic experiment in which we will recruit 500 adolescents aged 11 to 14, whose parents have decided to purchase them their first smartphone. Adolescents will be randomly assigned to use their smartphones without study-imposed restrictions on social media (naturalistic social media condition) or to use them without access to social media for three months (restricted social media condition). We are focusing on this population because research shows that most parents buy their children their first smartphones during this age range and the acquisition of one’s first smartphone is linked to greater exposure to social media. We hypothesize that adolescents in the naturalistic social media condition will report greater symptoms of anxiety and depression than adolescents in the restricted social media condition. Our experimental design will also allow us to provide evidence for the causal impact of social media on key mechanisms, providing targets for future interventions. We hypothesize that mobile access to social media will affect mental health by (A) increasing upward social comparison, (B) displacing sleep, physical activity, and in-person social interactions, and (C) interfering with the quality of in-person social interactions. Going beyond self-report measures of time spent on social media, we will use passive mobile sensing (EARS tool) to get objective, fine-grained measures of how adolescents use social media. Evidence shows that active social media (e.g., messaging, posting) use predicts better mental health, whereas passive social media use (scrolling, browsing) predicts worse mental health. We hypothesize that adolescents who use social media more actively will have better mental health outcomes. Finally, recent research suggests that while some people experience negative effects of social media use, others experience no or even positive effects. Individuals who already struggle to direct and sustain their attention should be particularly vulnerable to the distracting effects of mobile social media. We hypothesize that people in the naturalistic social media condition with greater deficits in attention at baseline will show greater increases in symptoms of anxiety and depression. We will also probe the moderating role of age, gender, and their interaction. To explore the role of a range of other moderators, we will employ an exploratory machine-learning approach, which will allow us to explore the intersectionality between multiple risk factors. In sum, our study will be the first field experiment to causally test whether social media impacts younger adolescents’ mental health, and if so, why, how, and for whom such effects occur.

执行摘要 在过去的十年中，美国的青少年心理健康急剧下降。这些下降 心理健康与社交媒体使用的增加相吻合，尤其是在智能手机上访问。 但是，由于大多数现有的研究都是相关的，因此尚不清楚社交媒体是否随便使用 影响青少年心理健康。我们将通过第一次来提高科学和公众知识 纵向现场实验，以检查社交媒体对11-14岁儿童心理健康的因果影响。 我们提出了一个基本实验，我们将招募500名11至14岁的青少年，父母有 决定购买他们的第一台智能手机。青少年将被随机分配给 智能手机没有对社交媒体（自然主义社交媒体条件）的限制或使用的智能手机 他们在三个月内无法进入社交媒体（社交媒体条件受限制）。我们专注于 该人口是因为研究表明，大多数父母在此期间购买了孩子的第一款智能手机 年龄范围和收购第一款智能手机的收购与更多接触社交媒体有关。我们 假设在自然主义社交媒体条件下的青少年将报告动画的更大症状 在社交媒体条件下，与青少年相比，抑郁症和抑郁症。我们的实验设计也将 允许我们提供社交媒体对关键机制的因果影响的证据，为目标提供了目标 未来的干预措施。我们假设移动访问社交媒体将影响（a） 增加社会比较，（b）取代睡眠，体育锻炼和面对面的社交互动， （c）干扰面对面社交互动的质量。超越自我报告的时间衡量 在社交媒体上花费，我们将使用被动移动感应（EARS工具）来获得客观，细粒度的测量 青少年如何使用社交媒体。有证据表明，主动社交媒体（例如，消息传递，发布）使用 预测更好的心理健康，而被动社交媒体使用（滚动，浏览）可以预测精神 健康。我们假设更积极地使用社交媒体的青少年将具有更好的心理健康 结果。最后，最近的研究表明，尽管有些人会经历社会的负面影响 媒体使用，其他人则没有甚至没有积极的影响。已经难以指导和维持的个人 他们的注意力应该特别容易受到移动社交媒体的分心影响。我们 假设在自然主义社交媒体条件下的人们在基线时具有更大的定义 将显示动画和抑郁症状的增加。我们还将探讨 年龄，性别及其互动。为了探索其他主持人的角色，我们将采用 探索性机器学习方法，这将使我们能够探索多个 风险因素。总而言之，我们的研究将是Causeal测试社交媒体是否影响的第一个现场实验 年轻的青少年的心理健康，如果是的，为什么，如何以及为谁出现这种影响。