measure-csea
Abstract
Adolescents spend more time on social media than ever, making it necessary to understand the impact of social
media use on their well-being. A largely unexplored, but potentially important, risk factor which may moderate
effects of social media on well-being is material deprivation. Using 10-wave longitudinal data from 23,155
adolescents collected between 2009 and 2019, we test whether adolescents who spend more time on social media
report lower levels of well-being, and whether differences in deprivation are associated with heightened sensitivity to positive or negative effects of their social media use. We find that deprived adolescents have less access
to social media. However, those adolescents from deprived households who do have social media access spend
slightly more time using it. Although we find that deprived adolescents are less satisfied with their lives,
deprivation does not seem to affect the longitudinal link from time spent on social media to life satisfaction.
