Towards an Integrated and Differential Approach to the Relationships Between Loneliness, Different Types of Facebook Use, and Adolescents’ Depressed Mood

• In Event: Promising Student Work in Information Systems

Abstract

Various studies examining antecedents and outcomes of adolescents’ social media use have relied on three different hypotheses: the poor-get-richer, the rich-get-richer and the poor-get-poorer hypothesis. Previous empirical tests however lacked (1) an integrated, longitudinal approach, which combined and tested these three hypotheses longitudinally in a single comprehensive model (2) a differential approach, which distinguished between different types of social media use, as well as. Therefore, the present two-wave panel study (N = 1,604) developed an integrated and differential model which aimed to provide a deeper understanding of the relationships between loneliness, different types of Facebook use and adolescents’ depressed mood. Using structural equation modeling, results point to the presence of a poor-get-richer mechanism with respect to adolescents’ active public Facebook use, but revealed a poor-get-poorer mechanism with respect to adolescents’ passive Facebook use. The discussion focuses on the explanation and understanding of these findings, limitations, and directions for future research.

Author

• Eline Frison, U of Leuven - School for Mass Communication Research