Tinder Use and Risk Behavior: A Pilot Study to Characterize Use and Influence Among Youth

• In Event: 2-106 - #PeerProblems: Examining the Role of Social Media in Transforming Peer Experiences and Influencing Adolescent Adjustment

Integrative Statement

Background: It is widely understood that peers and friends strongly influence youth’s opinions and behaviors (Brechwald & Prinstein, 2011). According to the transformation framework, social media exacerbates this peer influence, especially in terms of risky behaviors (Nesi et al., 2018). However, it also is important to consider peer influence on the types of social media that youth use. One type of social media that has not yet been studied in the late adolescent/emerging adult developmental stage is geosocial networking (GSN) applications, such as Tinder. Although several studies involving samples of men who have sex with men (MSM) have implicated Tinder in the recently rising rates of sexually transmitted infections (CDC, 2017), it is important to understand use patterns and influences among more diverse samples. Given the proclivity for both social media use and sexual risk behavior among adolescents and emerging adults, the current study sought to characterize Tinder use and perceptions of others’ use among a college sample and examine the link between such use and risk behaviors.

Method: As one of the first studies to assess Tinder use among late adolescents and emerging adults, pilot data were collected to characterize use in this population. Participants were undergraduate students at a medium sized public university in upstate New York (N=79; Mage= 20.6; 78% Caucasian) who reported on their use of Tinder and popular social media applications (e.g., Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat), their perception of other’s Tinder use, and engagement in risky behaviors.

Results: Only 22% of the sample reported having a current Tinder account. As expected, youth were much more similar in terms of Tinder use to their perceived friend’s use than they were to other students at their college (t(78)=8.5, p<.001) and other college students in general (t(78)=9.4, p<.001), who they assumed were much more likely to use Tinder (81% agreed most college students use Tinder). To examine the link between Tinder use and risky behaviors, a series of linear regressions that included seven popular social media applications as predictors revealed that only Tinder use was significantly associated with greater number of recent sex partners (β=.37, p<.05). Further, when alcohol use and binge drinking were included as outcomes, Instagram use was significantly associated with more alcohol use (β=.33, p<.05) and greater frequency of binge drinking (β=.61, p<.001).

Discussion: This pilot study highlights the similarity between friends in their use of the understudied social media platform, Tinder, at an important developmental stage. Interestingly, participants held highly disparate perceptions of Tinder use among same-aged peers in general, a finding that resembles the literature on youths’ tendency to overestimate peer risky behaviors (Lewis et al., 2012). These findings, coupled with the risky behavior correlates of using various social media platforms, especially Instagram, show support for the transformation framework of social media on peer influence (Nesi et al., 2018). Future research should continue to study not only how social media platforms offer new contexts for peer influence, but also how peers influence youths’ social media use patterns.

Authors

• Katherine Bonafide, SUNY Cortland
  Presenting Author

• Shannon Thomson, SUNY Cortland
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kaitlin M Flannery, SUNY Cortland
  Non-Presenting Author