Patterns of Social Media Use Among Adolescents Who Are Psychiatrically Hospitalized

Abstract

Adolescents' use of social media (SM) has increased drastically in recent years, with more than 80% of teens now belonging to sites such as Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook.¹ This has critical implications for youths' psychosocial development. Research increasingly supports a differential susceptibility model of media effects,² whereby certain adolescents show increased risk for negative effects of SM use. Emerging research with community samples of youth suggest that mental health concerns may be one factor that heightens vulnerability to adverse SM experiences. In particular, youth with internalizing symptoms are more likely to report negative emotional responses to SM activity.³ In addition, youth with suicidal thoughts or behaviors are more likely to experience cybervictimization, and may be at risk for exposure to suicide-related SM content.⁴ Despite this preliminary evidence, almost no research to date has examined SM use among youth with clinically severe psychiatric presentations. This has significantly limited our understanding of a central feature in the lives of youth with mental illness. To address this limitation, we examined SM experiences among a large sample of psychiatrically hospitalized adolescents. We sought to determine the prevalence of positive and negative SM experiences in this population, and to explore differences in SM use based on diagnostic presentation.