Gender, Adolescents, and Social Media
How are they all connected?
We’re learning more and more that social media use in adolescents (ages 10-19) is related to mental health concerns—you can read more about this here. Knowing this connection, who’s ready to dive into the specifics? It turns out that gender makes a big difference in how social media impacts our young people.
One group of researchers looked into how gender influences the way adolescents use social media and how it affects them as they age. Dr. Cara Booker and her team conducted a longitudinal study on a large group of 10 to 15-year-olds in the UK over five yearly waves.
The adolescents that participated in this research completed three surveys to understand shifts in social media use and well-being as they aged.
1. Social media use was measured by self-reported daily frequency of chatting on social media platforms.
2. Well-being was assigned a numerical value using a survey of questions about six domains of life: family, friends, appearance, school, schoolwork, and life as a whole.
3. Well-being was also determined by the SDQ (Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire), a well-established tool that screens for emotional and behavioural problems in children and adolescents between the ages of 3 to 16 years old. It asked questions related to hyperactivity/attention problems, emotional symptoms, conduct problems, and peer relationship problems. The higher the score on this questionnaire, the worse the well-being indication.
The well-being survey was completed annually, and the SDQs were completed biannually. Because these groups of adolescents were reviewed so consistently, this helped paint a detailed long-term picture
How Does Social Media Affect Boys and Girls Differently?
The study findings are probably unsurprising to most: young girls were more likely to be poorly affected by social media use than boys. This is largely because females consistently use social media more than males from ages 10 to 15. At age 13, half of the girls in the study were chatting online for more than 1 hour per day, compared to only ⅓ of the boys.
Age was important here because the research found that the older the girls got, the more they used social media, and the more it negatively impacted them. Well-being scores for girls decreased by 3.61% from age 10 to 15. Boys experienced a similar, albeit smaller drop in happiness with a reduction of 1.47%. The SDQ scores decreased for boys from ages 10 to 15 but increased for girls, which meant that girls were feeling the effects of social media more than boys as they aged.
In fact, when it came to boys, the reduction in well-being was not connected to social media, which led the researchers to assume it was due to other factors in their lives.
Why Is Social Media Worse For Girls?
Well, as we already touched on, girls tend to use social media more than boys. This is a phenomenon that spans all ages, not just adolescence. Girls also tend to be bombarded by messages about body image and gender expectations from a young age, to an extent that boys are not. But this is not to say that young boys are immune to social media messaging, simply that they’re less targeted by it. SO much of this messaging (ie. diet culture, influencers, body expectations) is found on social media today, so it only makes sense that more social media use leads to a decrease in happiness in young girls.
While this research may not be all good news, it’s great to be aware of the facts. One recommendation could be to make sure all 10 to 15 year olds are keeping their social media usage to a reasonable minimum, and especially keep an eye on the social media habits of young girls.
Try putting social media boundaries in place, such as turning on Do Not Disturb mode and adjusting notification settings. Another practical action could be designating specific no phone zones, like at the dinner table or in bed. And, as our blog on teens and social media suggested, it can be helpful for parents and guardians to stay connected to their adolescents on social media!
Study Objective & Methods
Gender differences in the associations between age trends of social media interaction and well-being among 10-15 year olds in the UK
Cara L. Booker, Research Fellow; Yvonne J. Kelly, PhD; Amanda Sacker, PhD
Published in BMC Public Health.
The goal of this study was to understand more about how adolescents’ social media use is affected by their gender as they age. The researchers used groups of adolescents aged 10-15 from the youth panel of Understanding Society: The UK Household Panel Study (UKHLS), studying a total of 9859 adolescents over five years. The study was conducted with groups consisting of some of the same adolescents each year and some new ones each year. The adolescents were asked two questions in order to determine the parameters for their social media use: (1) do you belong to a social website such as Bebo, Facebook, or MySpace?, and (2) how many hours do you spend chatting or interacting with friends through a social website like that on a normal school day? To measure correlations between happiness and social media use, the adolescents completed well-being surveys annually that asked questions about six domains of life: school, schoolwork, appearance, family, friends, and overall life. In addition, they completed SDQs (Strength and Difficulties Questionnaires) biannually.
Social Media and Well-Being Training
This research (and all our social media and well-being articles) have laid the foundation for our 3-course program designed for anyone wanting to approach social media and communications in a way that protects well-being and puts people first. Learn more here.
