Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting
Date Submitted: Mar 3, 2023
Date Accepted: Nov 1, 2023
Date Submitted to PubMed: Nov 15, 2023
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Problematic social media use and lifestyle behaviours in adolescents
ABSTRACT
Background:
The use of social media by adolescents has increased considerably in the past decade. With this increase of social media use in our daily lives, there has been a rapidly expanding awareness of the potential unhealthy lifestyle-related health effects arising from excessive, mal-adaptive or addictive social media use. The aim of this study is to assess the association between adolescents’ social media use and health-related behaviours.
Objective:
This study aimed to explore the lifestyle-related health impacts of the use of social media among adolescents, living in the Netherlands.
Methods:
We employed a cross-sectional research approach and analysed data from 96.919 adolescents at high schools throughout the Netherlands. A structured 43-item questionnaire was used to gather data on sociodemographic data, dietary and lifestyle factors and the degree of social media use based on the Compulsive Internet Scale (CIUS). Logistic regression analysis were performed to assess the association between problematic social media use and lifestyle behaviours, while adjusting for sociodemographic factors.
Results:
From the 96.919 included adolescents, 7.4% (7022) were identified as at-risk for problematic social media users (PSMUs). Furthermore, logistic regression results showed that adolescents who are at-risk for PSMU were more likely to report alcohol consumption and smoking, while simultaneously having significant lower levels of health-promoting behaviour such as healthy eating habits (eating fruits, vegetables and breakfast regularly) and physical activity.
Conclusions:
This study confirms that adolescents at-risk of PSMU were more likely to exhibit an unhealthy lifestyle. Being at-risk for PSMU was determinant of soft drugs use, alcohol consumption, smoking, poor eating habits and lower physical activity independent of the additional adjusted covariates including demographic variables and remaining lifestyle variables. Future research is needed to confirm this observation in an experimental setting.
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