1. Advancing our understanding of the associations between social media use and well-being
- Author
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Patti M. Valkenburg, Ine Beyens, Adrian Meier, Mariek M.P. Vanden Abeele, Bestuursstaf, and Youth & Media Entertainment (ASCoR, FMG)
- Subjects
Mental Health ,Humans ,Social Media ,General Psychology - Abstract
The effect of social media use on well-being is among the hottest debates in academia and society at large. Adults and adolescents alike spend around 2-3 hours per day on social media, and they typically use five to seven different platforms in a complementary way, to chat with their friends, to browse others’ posts, and present themselves to their friends and followers. In parallel with this surging social media use, research into its impact on well-being has accumulated rapidly. The aim of this special issue of Current Opinion in Psychology is to inform researchers about the rapidly expanding volume of studies into social media use and well-being. Each of the 26 invited reviews in this issue provides an indispensable overview of the uses and effects of social media use on well-being. A first section of this issue includes reviews that provide theoretical and/or methodological meta-perspectives. A second section focuses on different types of social media use, such as online dating, social gaming, and cyberbullying. A third section reviews the effects of social media use on risk and resilience factors of well-being, such as self-esteem, social comparison, and body image. And a final section pays attention to the uses and effects of social media among special audiences (older people, youth) and in different contexts (the workplace, the Global South). Together, this collection of accessible and inclusive reviews provides interested readers—researchers and practitioners alike—with the conceptual tools and empirical knowledge to assess the state of research into social media use and well-being.
- Published
- 2022