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 过去十年，美国青少年的心理健康状况急剧下降。 心理健康与社交媒体使用的增加同时发生，尤其是通过智能手机访问。 然而，由于大多数现有研究都是相关的，因此尚不清楚社交媒体的使用是否具有因果关系 我们将通过开展首次活动来促进科学和公共知识的发展。 纵向现场实验，探讨社交媒体对 11-14 岁青少年心理健康的因果影响。 我们提出了一项基本实验，招募 500 名 11 至 14 岁的青少年，他们的父母有 决定为他们购买第一部智能手机 青少年将被随机分配使用他们的。 没有研究对社交媒体施加限制（自然社交媒体条件）或使用的智能手机 他们三个月内无法访问社交媒体（社交媒体条件受限）。 这一人群是因为研究表明，大多数父母都会在这段时间内为孩子购买第一部智能手机 年龄范围和购买第一部智能手机与更多地接触社交媒体有关。 促使青少年在自然主义社交媒体条件下报告更严重的焦虑症状 我们的实验设计也将比青少年在社交媒体受限的情况下更容易患抑郁症。 让我们能够提供证据证明社交媒体对关键机制的因果影响，并为以下方面提供目标： 我们勇敢地面对社交媒体的移动访问将通过 (A) 影响心理健康。 增加向上的社会比较，(B) 取代睡眠、体力活动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标准。 在社交媒体上的花费，我们将使用被动移动传感（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，活跃的社交媒体（例如消息、发帖）使用。 预测更好的心理健康状况，而被动使用社交媒体（滚动、浏览）则预测更差的心理健康状况 我们追求更积极地使用社交媒体的青少年将拥有更好的心理健康。 最后，最近的研究表明，虽然有些人会受到社交的负面影响。 媒体的使用，其他已经在努力指导和维持的人没有感受到任何影响，甚至没有感受到积极的影响。 他们的注意力特别容易受到移动社交媒体的分散影响。 研究发现，处于自然主义社交媒体条件下的人在基线上注意力缺陷更大 我们还将探讨焦虑和抑郁症状的调节作用。 为了探索一系列其他主持人的作用，我们将聘请一个 探索性机器学习方法，这将使我们能够探索多个之间的交叉性 总之，我们的研究将是第一个因果测试社交媒体是否产生影响的现场实验。 青少年的心理健康状况，如果是的话，为什么、如何以及对谁会产生这种影响。