Interpersonal Communication andDigital Media: Interactions ofTime-Use and Well-Being Among Canadian Youth

• In Event: Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Topic - Technology, Media & Child Development

Abstract

In today’s digital world, excessive screen use has been implicated as a cause of internalizing problems (Boers, Afzali, Newton & Conrod, 2019; Vanucci & Ohannessian, 2019; Wang, Li, Kim, Lee & Seo, 2019) and a correlate of poor family functioning among adolescents (Foerster & Röösli, 2017; Vanucci & Ohannessian, 2019). It is necessary to examine both the frequency and context of screen use among youth, and avoid over-generalizing findings from studies of singular context or studies of high-use subgroups. It is difficult to accurately place screen time within the whole-family context due to high variance in measurements of screen use, which are often self-report data. However, it is important to understand the family and social network’s role as a protective or risk factor across different levels of engagement with screens on a day-today basis. To our knowledge, no studies have investigated the latent profiles formed by youth’s daily time on screens with daily interpersonal communication among parents, family, and friends directly included in latent profiles. Data for this research were selected, cleaned and analyzed from Statistics Canada’s General Social Survey, Cycle 29, Time Use file. Our sub-sample of adolescents and emerging adults included a nationally representative group of respondents ages 15-34 (N = 3430). Respondents provided time-use reports across 10 indicator variables of time spent on social, familial and digital activities. Analysis in MPlus version 8.2 (Muthén & Muthén, 2019) identified four distinct time-use profiles (Table 1 & Figure 1): high tech users (n=206), average socializers (n=2890), peer-oriented high tech socializers (n=72) and high in-person socializers (n=262). Pairwise comparisons between profiles in MPlus revealed that youth in the high tech use subgroup had poorer self-rated mental health than those in the average socializers group (p=.032), despite this group reporting higher self-rated stress (p=.002). These findings may be indicative of greater capacity for adjustment in the average socializers group. The peer-oriented high tech socializers and high in-person socializers showed no significant differences across outcomes of mental health and well-being. This research highlights the importance of considering interpersonal communication and multiple forms of digital media use together when conducting screen time research. Overall, data so far suggest that the interplay between youths social context and screen time warrants further investigation.

Authors

• Sarah Kathryn Churchill, University of Waterloo
  Presenting Author

• Dillon Browne, University of Waterloo
  Non-Presenting Author