Social Media Use and Friendship Closeness in Adolescents’ Daily Lives: An Experience Sampling Study

• In Event: Social media and adolescent relationships: The good, the bad, and the complicated

Abstract

The formation and maintenance of close friendships is an important developmental task in adolescence (Berndt, 2002). Close friendships are characterized by supportiveness, accessibility, and responsiveness, and fulfill adolescents’ need for intimacy (Armsden & Greenberg, 1987; Furman & Buhrmester, 1985; Sullivan, 1953). Virtually all adolescents use social media on a daily basis to connect with their friends (van Driel et al., 2019). In order to obtain insight in real-time processes that may underlie the development of friendship closeness in middle adolescence, this preregistered experience sampling study [ESM] investigated the effects of the three most popular social media among Dutch adolescents (i.e., Instagram, WhatsApp, and Snapchat) on friendship closeness (Pre-registration: https://edu.nl/63xaf).

This study was conducted among 387 adolescents (54% girls, Mage = 14.11 years). Adolescents reported six times per day for three weeks on their Instagram, WhatsApp, and Snapchat use (with and without friends) in the previous hour and their momentary experiences of friendship closeness (126 assessments; 34,930 observations). Data were analyzed by means of multi-level analyses, to disentangle within-person associations from between-person associations of Instagram/WhatsApp/Snapchat use with friendship closeness (Keijsers & van Roekel, 2018; Prinstein et al., 2020).

Multi-level analyses revealed positive between-person associations of friendship closeness with general WhatsApp use and Instagram use with friends (see Table 1). Adolescents who spent more time on WhatsApp or Instagram with friends as compared to their peers, experienced higher average levels of friendship closeness across the three weeks. Although at first sight the positive between-person associations appear to suggest that social media use stimulates friendship closeness, within-person associations suggested the opposite. That is, small negative overall within-person associations of general WhatsApp use and Instagram use (with and without friends) with friendship closeness were found. Adolescents experienced lower levels of friendship closeness after they had used WhatsApp or Instagram (with or without friends) in the previous hour than after they had not. Although the average within-person effects were small, there was substantial heterogeneity in the person-specific effect sizes of the within-person associations of social media use with friendship closeness (see Figure 1). For example, person-specific effect sizes of the association of Instagram use with friends with friendship closeness ranged from -.745 to +.697.

Dynamic system theories may provide an explanation of why associations of social media use with friendship closeness had an opposing sign at the within-person and between-person level. Perhaps, through socio-emotional non-linear feedback loops, short-term negative effects of social media use upon experienced friendships may motivate youths to invest more in their friendships, leading to longer term positive between-person associations of social media use and friendship closeness.

The heterogeneity in within-person effects provides preliminary evidence for the idea that social media use may be harmful for some youths and beneficial for others and underlines the importance of acknowledging person-specific effects in peer relationship and media effects theories. Future research is needed to examine for which adolescents and under which circumstances social media use stimulates friendship closeness, and for whom and when social media use negatively affects friendship closeness.

Authors

• Loes Pouwels, University of Amsterdam
  Presenting Author

• Patti M. Valkenburg, University of Amsterdam
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ine Beyens, University of Amsterdam
  Non-Presenting Author

• Irene I. van Driel, University of Amsterdam
  Non-Presenting Author

• Loes Keijsers, Erasmus University Rotterdam
  Non-Presenting Author