Development, validity, and reliability of the parent-adolescent communication about adolescents' social media use scale (PACAS).

Adolescents spend a substantial portion of their time using social media. Yet, there is a lack of understanding regarding how often parents and adolescents communicate about this social media use. To address this gap, we developed the Parent-Adolescent Communication about Adolescents' Social Media Use Scale (PACAS). In a first data wave, among 388 Dutch adolescents (13-15 years; 54% girls), exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses distinguished four scales: parental solicitation, adolescent disclosure, adolescent secrecy, and parental knowledge. All four scales had strong internal reliability and correlated in the expected directions. We re-established the validity and internal reliability and obtained test-retest reliability in a second wave, in which 330 adolescents were surveyed again. The findings show that parents and adolescents infrequently communicate about social media. Parental knowledge about adolescents' social media use strongly depends on the communication efforts of both parties. Altogether, the PACAS provides a valuable tool to explore the dynamics of parent-adolescent communication about social media.

Prior State of Knowledge: Adolescents use social media around the clock. This raises concerns among parents about what their adolescents do and experience on social media. Yet, our understanding of how parents and adolescents communicate about these issues is limited. Novel Contributions: This study developed the Parent-Adolescent Communication about Adolescents' Social Media Use Scale (PACAS), which consists of four scales: parental solicitation, adolescent disclosure, adolescent secrecy, and parental knowledge. The findings show that parents and adolescents infrequently communicate about social media. Practical Implications: The findings emphasize that parents should not only solicit information but also foster open communication so that adolescents can willingly disclose information about their social media use. Only then can parents keep informed about their adolescents' social media experiences.

Explaining variation in adolescents' social media-related distraction: The role of social connectivity and disconnectivity factors.

Social media are often believed to distract adolescents' attention. While existing research has shown that some adolescents experience more social media-related distraction than others, the explanations for these differences remain largely unknown. Based on Self-Determination Theory, this preregistered study investigated two social connectivity factors (fear of missing out [FoMO] and friendship accessibility expectations) and two disconnectivity factors (self-control strategies and parental restrictions) that may explain heterogeneity in social media-related distraction. We used data collected through a measurement burst design, consisting of a three-week experience sampling method study among 300 adolescents (21,970 assessments) and online surveys. Using N = 1 analyses, we found that most adolescents (77%) experienced social media-related distraction. Contrary to expectations, none of the connectivity or disconnectivity factors explained differences in social media-related distraction. The findings indicate that social media are a powerful distractor many adolescents seem to struggle with.

Just a Joke? Adolescents' Preferences for Humor in Media Entertainment and Real-Life Aggression.

Humorous media entertainment frequently punctuates the everyday lives of adolescents. Theorists have suggested that this exposure may impact behavior, particularly real-life aggression. Specifically, exposure to prosocial (coping) humor in media entertainment is posited to decrease aggression, whereas the reverse has been argued for exposure to antisocial (disparaging and slapstick) humor. Despite these suppositions, little empirical evidence about this relationship exists. To fill this gap, this study employed a cohort-sequential design using latent growth curve models to estimate the (co-)development of adolescents' preferences for television shows featuring disparaging, slapstick, and coping humor and aggression from age 10 to 17. Results showed that at the onset of adolescence, especially boys had a higher preference for shows with disparaging and slapstick humor than with coping humor. However, over the course of adolescence, boys' and girls' preferences for shows with coping humor increased, while especially girls' preferences for shows with disparaging and slapstick humor decreased. These preferences were unrelated to adolescents' aggression. Our findings provide an important addition to the ongoing media effects debate. Taken together, they offer room for optimism and point toward an increased focus on the potential positive rather than the negative sides of humor in the lives of young people.

Experience sampling self-reports of social media use have comparable predictive validity to digital trace measures.

Research agrees that self-reported measures of time spent with social media (TSM) show poor convergent validity, because they correlate modestly with equivalent objective digital trace measures. This experience sampling study among 159 adolescents (12,617 self-reports) extends this work by examining the comparative predictive validity of self-reported and digital trace measures of TSM, that is, the extent to which self-reported and digital trace measures of TSM correspond in their effects on self-esteem, well-being, and friendship closeness. Using an N = 1 method of analysis, we investigated the correspondence on a between-person, within-person, and person-specific level. Although our results confirmed the poor convergent validity of self-reported TSM reported earlier, we found that self-reports of TSM had comparable predictive validity to digital trace measures on all three levels. Because comparative predictive validity of self-reported TSM is crucial for investigating social media effects, our results have important implications for future research using self-reported TSM.

Social media use and well-being: What we know and what we need to know.

Research into the impact of social media use (SMU) on well-being (e.g., happiness) and ill-being (e.g., depression) has exploded over the past few years. From 2019 to August 2021, 27 reviews have been published: nine meta-analyses, nine systematic reviews, and nine narrative reviews, which together included hundreds of empirical studies. The aim of this umbrella review is to synthesize the results of these meta-analyses and reviews. Even though the meta-analyses are supposed to rely on the same evidence base, they yielded disagreeing associations with well- and ill-being, especially for time spent on SM, active SMU, and passive SMU. This umbrella review explains why their results disagree, summarizes the gaps in the literature, and ends with recommendations for future research.

Social media use and its impact on adolescent mental health: An umbrella review of the evidence.

Literature reviews on how social media use affects adolescent mental health have accumulated at an unprecedented rate of late. Yet, a higher-level integration of the evidence is still lacking. We fill this gap with an up-to-date umbrella review, a review of reviews published between 2019 and mid-2021. Our search yielded 25 reviews: seven meta-analyses, nine systematic, and nine narrative reviews. Results showed that most reviews interpreted the associations between social media use and mental health as 'weak' or 'inconsistent,' whereas a few qualified the same associations as 'substantial' and 'deleterious.' We summarize the gaps identified in the reviews, provide an explanation for their diverging interpretations, and suggest several avenues for future research.

Some socially poor but also some socially rich adolescents feel closer to their friends after using social media.

Who benefits most from using social media is an important societal question that is centered around two opposing hypotheses: the rich-get-richer versus the poor-get-richer hypothesis. This study investigated the assumption that both hypotheses may be true, but only for some socially rich and some socially poor adolescents and across different time intervals. We employed a state-of-the-art measurement burst design, consisting of a three-week experience sampling study and seven biweekly follow-up surveys. Person-specific analyses of more than 70,000 observations from 383 adolescents revealed that 12% of the socially rich adolescents (high in friendship support or low in loneliness) felt closer to their friends after using social media, as opposed to about 25% of the socially poor adolescents (low in friendship support or high in loneliness). However, only 1 to 6% of all adolescents (socially rich and poor) felt closer both in the short- and longer-term. These results indicate that the rich-get-richer and the poor-get-richer hypotheses can hold both, but for different adolescents.

Social media use and friendship closeness in adolescents' daily lives: An experience sampling study.

The formation and maintenance of friendship closeness is an important developmental task in adolescence. To obtain insight in real-time processes that may underly the development of friendship closeness in middle adolescence, this preregistered experience sampling study [ESM] investigated the effects of social media use on friendship closeness. The study was conducted among 387 adolescents (54% girls; Mage = 14.11 years; 96% Dutch) from different educational tracks (44% lower prevocational secondary education, 31% intermediate general secondary education, 26% academic preparatory education). Adolescents reported six times per day for 3 weeks on their Instagram, WhatsApp, and Snapchat use in the previous hour and their momentary experiences of friendship closeness (126 assessments; 34,930 observations). Multilevel analyses revealed positive between-person associations of friendship closeness with general WhatsApp use and Instagram use with close friends. In contrast, at the within-person level, we found small negative overall associations of general WhatsApp use and Instagram use (with and without close friends) with friendship closeness. However, there was large heterogeneity in the person-specific effect sizes of the within-person associations of social media use with friendship closeness. For example, person-specific effect sizes of the association of Instagram use with close friends with friendship closeness ranged from ß = -.745 to ß = .697. These results underline the importance of acknowledging person-specific effects in developmental and media effect theories. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The building blocks of social competence: Contributions of the Consortium of Individual Development.

Social competence refers to the ability to engage in meaningful interactions with others. It is a crucial skill potentially malleable to interventions. Nevertheless, it remains difficult to select which children, which periods in a child's life, and which underlying skills form optimal targets for interventions. Development of social competence is complex to characterize because (a) it is by nature context- dependent; (b) it is subserved by multiple relevant processes that develop at different times in a child's life; and (c) over the years multiple, possibly conflicting, ways have been coined to index a child's social competence. The current paper elaborates upon a theoretical model of social competence developed by Rose-Krasnor (Rose- Krasnor, 1997; Rose-Krasnor and Denham, 2009), and it makes concrete how underlying skills and the variety of contexts of social interaction are both relevant dimensions of social competence that might change over development. It then illustrates how the cohorts and work packages in the Consortium on Individual Development each provide empirical contributions necessary for testing this model on the development of social competence.

The effect of social media on well-being differs from adolescent to adolescent.

The question whether social media use benefits or undermines adolescents' well-being is an important societal concern. Previous empirical studies have mostly established across-the-board effects among (sub)populations of adolescents. As a result, it is still an open question whether the effects are unique for each individual adolescent. We sampled adolescents' experiences six times per day for one week to quantify differences in their susceptibility to the effects of social media on their momentary affective well-being. Rigorous analyses of 2,155 real-time assessments showed that the association between social media use and affective well-being differs strongly across adolescents: While 44% did not feel better or worse after passive social media use, 46% felt better, and 10% felt worse. Our results imply that person-specific effects can no longer be ignored in research, as well as in prevention and intervention programs.

Norms of online expressions of emotion: Comparing Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

The main aim of this study was to examine the norms of expressing emotions on social media. Specifically, the perceived appropriateness (i.e. injunctive norms) of expressing six discrete emotions (i.e. sadness, anger, disappointment, worry, joy, and pride) was investigated across four different social media platforms. Drawing on data collected in March 2016 among 1201 young Dutch users (15-25 years), we found that positive expressions were generally perceived as more appropriate than negative expressions across all platforms. In line with the objective of the study, some platform differences were found. The expression of negative emotions was rated as most appropriate for WhatsApp, followed by Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. For positive emotion expression, perceived appropriateness was highest for WhatsApp, followed by Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Additionally, some gender differences were found, while age showed little variations. Overall, the results contribute to a more informed understanding of emotion expression online.

Screen media use and ADHD-related behaviors: Four decades of research.

The diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) among children and adolescents has increased considerably over the past decades. Scholars and health professionals alike have expressed concern about the role of screen media in the rise in ADHD diagnosis. However, the extent to which screen media use and ADHD are linked remains a point of debate. To understand the current state of the field and, ultimately, move the field forward, we provide a systematic review of the literature on the relationship between children and adolescents' screen media use and ADHD-related behaviors (i.e., attention problems, hyperactivity, and impulsivity). Using the Differential Susceptibility to Media effects Model as a theoretical lens, we systematically organize the existing literature, identify potential shortcomings in this literature, and provide directions for future research. The available evidence suggests a statistically small relationship between media and ADHD-related behaviors. Evidence also suggests that individual child differences, such as gender and trait aggression, may moderate this relationship. There is a clear need for future research that investigates causality, underlying mechanisms, and differential susceptibility to the effects of screen media use on ADHD-related behaviors. It is only through a richer empirical body that we will be able to fully understand the media-ADHD relationship.

App features that fulfill parents' needs in apps for children.

When parents select apps for young children (3-7), they have particular needs. However, it is unclear how these needs might be fulfilled. Uses and gratifications theory predicts that specific features of apps can fulfill needs, but empirical evidence regarding the types of features that fulfill these needs is nonexistent. To address this gap, a multimethodological design was used. Qualitative interviews (n = 20) revealed 23 features in children's apps that parents believe are important. A subsequent survey (n = 591) showed that parents want apps with (a) clear design; (b) tailorable, controllable, educational content; (c) challenges and rewards; and (d) technological innovation. Consistent with theory, analyses revealed that parents' needs relate to these app features, but child's age and gender play a key role in this relationship.

The concurrent and longitudinal relationships between adolescents' use of social network sites and their social self-esteem.

The first aim of this study was to investigate the concurrent and longitudinal relationships between adolescents' use of social network sites (SNSs) and their social self-esteem. The second aim was to investigate whether the valence of the feedback that adolescents receive on SNSs can explain these relationships. We conducted a three-wave panel study among 852 pre- and early adolescents (10-15 years old). In line with earlier research, we found significant concurrent correlations between adolescents' SNS use and their social self-esteem in all three data waves. The longitudinal results only partly confirmed these concurrent findings: Adolescents' initial SNS use did not significantly influence their social self-esteem in subsequent years. In contrast, their initial social self-esteem consistently influenced their SNS use in subsequent years. The valence of online feedback from close friends and acquaintances explained the concurrent relationship between SNS use and social self-esteem, but not the longitudinal relationship. Results are discussed in terms of their methodological and theoretical implications.

Adolescents and Pornography: A Review of 20 Years of Research.

The goal of this review was to systematize empirical research that was published in peer-reviewed English-language journals between 1995 and 2015 on the prevalence, predictors, and implications of adolescents' use of pornography. This research showed that adolescents use pornography, but prevalence rates varied greatly. Adolescents who used pornography more frequently were male, at a more advanced pubertal stage, sensation seekers, and had weak or troubled family relations. Pornography use was associated with more permissive sexual attitudes and tended to be linked with stronger gender-stereotypical sexual beliefs. It also seemed to be related to the occurrence of sexual intercourse, greater experience with casual sex behavior, and more sexual aggression, both in terms of perpetration and victimization. The findings of this review need to be seen against the background of various methodological and theoretical shortcomings, as well as several biases in the literature, which currently precludes internally valid causal conclusions about effects of pornography on adolescents.

Media Effects: Theory and Research.

This review analyzes trends and commonalities among prominent theories of media effects. On the basis of exemplary meta-analyses of media effects and bibliometric studies of well-cited theories, we identify and discuss five features of media effects theories as well as their empirical support. Each of these features specifies the conditions under which media may produce effects on certain types of individuals. Our review ends with a discussion of media effects in newer media environments. This includes theories of computer-mediated communication, the development of which appears to share a similar pattern of reformulation from unidirectional, receiver-oriented views, to theories that recognize the transactional nature of communication. We conclude by outlining challenges and promising avenues for future research.

The Limited Informativeness of Meta-Analyses of Media Effects.

In this issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, Christopher Ferguson reports on a meta-analysis examining the relationship between children's video game use and several outcome variables, including aggression and attention deficit symptoms (Ferguson, 2015, this issue). In this commentary, I compare Ferguson's nonsignificant effects sizes with earlier meta-analyses on the same topics that yielded larger, significant effect sizes. I argue that Ferguson's choice for partial effects sizes is unjustified on both methodological and theoretical grounds. I then plead for a more constructive debate on the effects of violent video games on children and adolescents. Until now, this debate has been dominated by two camps with diametrically opposed views on the effects of violent media on children. However, even the earliest media effects studies tell us that children can react quite differently to the same media content. Thus, if researchers truly want to understand how media affect children, rather than fight for the presence or absence of effects, they need to adopt a perspective that takes differential susceptibility to media effects more seriously.

The Internet Gaming Disorder Scale.

Recently, the American Psychiatric Association included Internet gaming disorder (IGD) in the appendix of the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). The main aim of the current study was to test the reliability and validity of 4 survey instruments to measure IGD on the basis of the 9 criteria from the DSM-5: a long (27-item) and short (9-item) polytomous scale and a long (27-item) and short (9-item) dichotomous scale. The psychometric properties of these scales were tested among a representative sample of 2,444 Dutch adolescents and adults, ages 13-40 years. Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that the structural validity (i.e., the dimensional structure) of all scales was satisfactory. Both types of assessment (polytomous and dichotomous) were also reliable (i.e., internally consistent) and showed good criterion-related validity, as indicated by positive correlations with time spent playing games, loneliness, and aggression and negative correlations with self-esteem, prosocial behavior, and life satisfaction. The dichotomous 9-item IGD scale showed solid psychometric properties and was the most practical scale for diagnostic purposes. Latent class analysis of this dichotomous scale indicated that 3 groups could be discerned: normal gamers, risky gamers, and disordered gamers. On the basis of the number of people in this last group, the prevalence of IGD among 13- through 40-year-olds in the Netherlands is approximately 4%. If the DSM-5 threshold for diagnosis (experiencing 5 or more criteria) is applied, the prevalence of disordered gamers is more than 5%.

Media use and ADHD-related behaviors in children and adolescents: A meta-analysis.

There are several theoretical reasons to believe that media use might be related to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or ADHD-related behaviors (i.e., attention problems, hyperactivity, and impulsivity). Although studies into the media-ADHD relationship have accumulated, they have yielded inconsistent results. Therefore, we still do not know whether children's media use and ADHD-related behaviors are related and, if so, under which conditions. To fill this gap in the literature, we first identified 6 different hypotheses that may explain why media use in general and viewing fast-paced or violent media content might be related to 1 or more ADHD-related behaviors. Subsequently, we conducted a meta-analysis of 45 empirical studies investigating the relationship between media use and ADHD-related behaviors in children and adolescents. Our results indicated a small significant relationship between media use and ADHD-related behaviors (r+ = .12). Finally, we identified several specific gaps in the existing literature and presented 5 crucial directions for future research.