Poster #234 - Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction Predicts Adolescents’ Social Media Use through Depression and Social Anxiety

• In Event: 1-061 - Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Section - Technology, Media & Child Development

Integrative Statement

Self-determination theory suggests that there are three basic psychological needs: relatedness, autonomy, and competence (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Satisfaction of these needs are essential for psychological well-being and optimal development; however, frustration of them can lead to psychological problems such as depression and anxiety. Social media has become one of the most essential entities in adolescents’ lives. Concerns that adolescents’ intense use of social media would impair their psychological development and well-being, has been discussed in literature. Many studies argue that there is a negative link between social media use and well-being. However, there is no consensus about the directionality of the relation. Although it would be expected that frustration of basic needs can lead to problematic social media use, there is a dearth of information about the relation between adolescents’ social media use and basic psychological need satisfaction. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether adolescents’ basic psychological needs have an indirect effect on their social media use towards its effects on psychological problems. Hypotheses of the study were that basic need satisfaction would negatively predicts psychological problems (e.g., depression, loneliness, and social interaction anxiety) and compulsive social media use; psychological problems would positively predict compulsive social media use; relation between basic need satisfaction and compulsive social media use would be mediated by psychological problems.
Participants were 339 adolescents (195 girls) from Turkey between 15-18 years old (M= 16.06, SD= .97) who provided information on demographics, compulsive social media use, basic psychological need satisfaction, depression, loneliness, and social interaction anxiety.
A series of parallel multiple mediation analyses showed that autonomy, competence, and total basic need satisfaction have indirect effects on compulsive social media use which are mediated by depression and social interaction anxiety. Loneliness was not a mediator in these relations and did not predict compulsive social media use. In addition, relatedness need satisfaction has neither a direct nor an indirect effect on compulsive social media use. Statistically significant mediation models showed that lower levels of autonomy, competence, and total need satisfaction predicted higher levels of depression and social interaction anxiety which, in turn, led to higher levels of compulsive social media use. Hypotheses were supported for autonomy, competence, and total need satisfaction but not for relatedness. Loneliness was expected to be one of the mediators of the suggested models; however, hypotheses were not supported for loneliness. In conclusion, findings of this study have shed light on the topic of the relation between basic psychological need satisfaction and social media use that is a timely and understudied topic. Findings imply that level of basic need satisfaction can predict whether adolescents’ social media use will be problematic or not. This implication may help to prevent adolescents’ problematic social media use by leading them to activities that can satisfy their basic psychological needs.

Authors

• Salih Barman, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
  Presenting Author

• Aysun Dogan, Ege University
  Non-Presenting Author