CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 58Impact of Technology on AdolescentsPsychological Well-being and Life SatisfactionMental Health via Writing

Associations between youth’s daily social media use and well-being are mediated by upward comparisons

Open access
Irmer, Andrea, Schmiedek, Florian·2023·Communications Psychology
DOI 10.1038/s44271-023-00013-0PMC PMC11332017
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

Studies examining the associations between social media use and subjective well-being have revealed inconsistent results and mainly refer to the between-person level. We conducted a 14-day diary study among 200 youths ages 10 to 14 to examine within- and between-person associations of social media use (Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube), subjective well-being (positive/negative self-worth, positive/negative affect), and upward social comparisons (general impression of others being better off). Multilevel structural equation models showed that social media use was linked to lower positive and higher negative self-worth on a daily basis, and that upward social comparisons were linked to diminished subjective well-being on all dimensions. Furthermore, our findings were consistent with (partial) mediation of the effect of social media use on subjective well-being by upward social comparisons on the between- and within-person levels. Youths’ feelings that others are better off than themselves may help explain part of the heterogeneity of previous findings.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1038/s44271-023-00013-0

Cites

41 of 41 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Both the exposure to upward comparisons and their extreme nature are central contributors to the emotional consequences of social media use.

    “Both the exposure to upward comparisons and their extreme nature are central contributors to the emotional consequences of social media use (Gerber et al., 2018; Schmuck et al., 2019; Irmer and Schmiedek, 2023).”

    From The associations between social comparison on social media and young adults’ mental health (2025) · cites this paper as Irmer and Schmiedek, 2023

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 36

  1. [11]Niu, G.-F. et al. Qzone use and depression among Chinese adolescents: a moderated mediation model. J. Affect. Disord. 231, 58–62 (2018). 29453010
  2. [12]Tsitsika, A. K. et al. Online social networking in adolescence: patterns of use in six European countries and links with psychosocial functioning. J. Adolesc. Health 55, 141–147 (2014). 24618179
  3. [19]Keresteš, G. & Štulhofer, A. Adolescents’ online social network use and life satisfaction: a latent growth curve modeling approach. Comput. Hum. Behav. 104, 106187 (2020).
  4. [21]Quinn, S. & Oldmeadow, J. A. Is the igeneration a 'we' generation? Social networking use among 9- to 13-year-olds and belonging. Br. J. Dev. Psychol. 31, 136–142 (2013). 23331112
  5. [22]Valkenburg, P. M., Koutamanis, M. & Vossen, H. G. M. The concurrent and longitudinal relationships between adolescents' use of social network sites and their social self-esteem. Comput. Hum. Behav. 76, 35–41 (2017). PMC5608942 29104364
  6. [26]Piteo, E. M. & Ward, K. Social networking sites and associations with depressive and anxiety symptoms in children and adolescents: a systematic review. Child Adolesc. Ment Health 25, 201–216 (2020). 33118256
  7. [27]Shin, M. et al. Online media consumption and depression in young people: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Comput. Hum. Behav. 128, 107129 (2022).
  8. [32]Schmidt, A. et al. The bright and the dark side of peer relationships: differential effects of relatedness satisfaction and frustration at school on affective well-being in children’s daily lives. Dev. Psychol. 56, 1532–1546 (2020). 32525325
  9. [35]Johannes, N. et al. No effect of different types of media on well-being. Sci. Rep. 12, 61 (2022). 34992220 PMC8738753
  10. [38]Beyens, I. et al. Social media use and adolescents’ well-being: developing a typology of person-specific effect patterns. Commun. Res. 10.1177/00936502211038196 (2021). · DOI · Paper page
  11. [45]Eccles, J. S. The development of children ages 6 to 14. Future Child 9, 30–42 (1999). 10646256
  12. [48]Schreurs, L., Meier, A. & Vandenbosch, L. Exposure to the positivity bias and adolescents’ differential longitudinal links with inspiration and envy depending on social media literacy. Curr. Psychol. 10.1007/s12144-022-03893-3 (2022). PMC9638310 36373115 · DOI
  13. [51]Midgley, C. et al. When every day is a high school reunion: social media comparisons and self-esteem. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 121, 285–307 (2021). 32790470
  14. [52]Pera, A. Psychopathological processes involved in social comparison, depression, and envy on Facebook. Front. Psychol. 9, 1–5 (2018). 29410643 PMC5787093
  15. [53]Nesi, J. & Prinstein, M. J. Using social media for social comparison and feedback-seeking: gender and popularity moderate associations with depressive symptoms. J. Abnorm. Child Psychol. 43, 1427–1438 (2015). 25899879 PMC5985443
  16. [55]Krause, H.-V. et al. Unifying the detrimental and beneficial effects of social network site use on self-esteem: a systematic literature review. Media Psychol. 24, 10–47 (2021).
  17. [59]Pang, H. Unraveling the influence of passive and active WeChat interactions on upward social comparison and negative psychological consequences among university students. Telemat. Inform. 57, 101510 (2021).
  18. [69]Hofmann, W., Reinecke, L. & Meier, A. The Routledge Handbook Of Media Use And Well-being: International Perspectives On Theory And Research On Positive Media Effects. (eds. Reinecke L. and Oliver M. B.) p. 211-222 (Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2017).
  19. [75]Masciantonio, A. et al. Don't put all social network sites in one basket: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and their relations with well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. PLoS ONE 16, e0248384 (2021). 33705462 PMC7951844
  20. [76]Tibber, M. S., Zhao, J. & Butler, S. The association between self-esteem and dimensions and classes of cross-platform social media use in a sample of emerging adults – evidence from regression and latent class analyses. Comput. Hum. Behav. 109, 106371 (2020).
  21. [77]Diener, E. Subjective well-being. Psychol. Bull. 95, 542–575 (1984). 6399758
  22. [78]Rosenberg, M. Society And The Adolescent Self-image (University Press, 1965).
  23. [82]Leonhardt, A. et al. How differentiated do children experience affect? An investigation of the within- and between-person structure of children’s affect. Psychol. Assess. 28, 575–585 (2016). 26280488
  24. [84]Limberger, M. F. et al. Assessing affect in adolescents with e-diaries: model fit and reliability in multilevel confirmatory factor analyses of different factor models. Front. Psychol. 14, 1061229 (2023). 37425158 PMC10328383
  25. [86]Chen Y., Li R. and Liu X. Relatedness frustration and compensatory behaviors in social networking sites among chinese college students: role of self-control failure. Curr. Psychol.10.1007/s12144-021-01440-0 (2021). · DOI
  26. [88]Preacher, K. J., Zyphur, M. J. & Zhang, Z. A general multilevel SEM framework for assessing multilevel mediation. Psychol. Methods 15, 209–233 (2010). 20822249
  27. [89]Kenny, D. A., Korchmaros, J. D. & Bolger, N. Lower level mediation in multilevel models. Psychol. Methods 8, 115–128 (2003). 12924810
  28. [90]Heron, K. E. et al. Using mobile-technology-based ecological momentary assessment (EMA) methods with youth: a systematic review and recommendations. J. Pediatr. Psychol. 42, 1087–1107 (2017). 28475765
  29. [92]Bolger, N. & Laurenceau, J-P. Methodology In The Social Sciences (Guilford Press, 2013).
  30. [93]Gudiño, D. et al. Social media and the pandemic: consumption habits of the Spanish population before and during the COVID-19 lockdown. Sustainability 14, 5490 (2022).
  31. [95]Bonfanti, R. C. et al. A longitudinal investigation on problematic Facebook use, psychological distress and well-being during the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic. Sci. Rep. 12, 21828 (2022). 36528751 PMC9758466
  32. [96]Turner, M. & Ordonia, D. How COVID-19 changed self-presentation on instagram and its relation to user well-being. Interact. Comput. 10.1093/iwc/iwad013 (2023). · DOI
  33. [99]Meier, A. & Johnson, B. K. Social comparison and envy on social media: a critical review. Curr. Opin. Psychol. 45, 101302 (2022). 35184028
  34. [100]Salmela-Aro, K. et al. The dark side of internet use: two longitudinal studies of excessive internet use, depressive symptoms, school burnout and engagement among Finnish early and late adolescents. J. Youth Adolesc. 46, 343–357 (2017). 27138172
  35. [101]Frison, E. & Eggermont, S. “Harder, better, faster, stronger”: negative comparison on Facebook and adolescents‘ life satisfaction are reciprocally related. Cyberpsychol. Behav. Soc. Netw. 19, 158–164 (2016). 26836301
  36. [102]Geldhof, G. J., Preacher, K. J. & Zyphur, M. J. Reliability estimation in a multilevel confirmatory factor analysis framework. Psychol. Methods 19, 72–91 (2014). 23646988

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Irmer, A., & Schmiedek, F.
Affiliations
  • Individual Development and Adaptive Education (DE)
  • Goethe University Frankfurt (DE)
Corresponding author
Irmer, Andrea
ORCID
Venue
Communications Psychology
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2023-08-22
Volume
1
Issue
1
Pages
12-12
ISSN
2731-9121 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1038/s44271-023-00013-0
PMC
PMC11332017
OpenAlex
W4386069164
Cited by
58
References
41
Citations by year
2026: 32 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 2
FWCI
24.92
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Communications Psychology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
Funders
Center for Research on Individual Development and Adaptive Education of Children at Risk
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Impact of Technology on Adolescents
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Mental Health via Writing
Keywords
social media use, subjective well-being, upward social comparison, youth, self-worth, positive and negative affect, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, within-person associations, between-person associations, mediation

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review