#Grateful: Longitudinal Associations Between Adolescents' Social Media Use and Gratitude During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

ABSTRACT

During the COVID-19 pandemic, some ways of using social media-such as directly communicating with friends-may have helped adolescents thrive. We examined longitudinal associations between high school adolescents' social media use and gratitude across a 15-month period before and during the pandemic (n = 704, Mage  = 15.10; 52% girls). The trajectories of gratitude and the importance of social media for meaningful conversations with friends-but not frequency of social media use-were positively associated over time. At the within-person level, gratitude predicted increased importance of social media for meaningful conversations, but not vice-versa. Findings suggest that gratitude may be associated with and may motivate using social media to foster social connection, but may not increase overall social media use.