Social media is central to teenage lives. In the United States, according to 2022 figures from the Pew Research Center, 67% of 13-17 year olds are on the TikTok network, 62% on Instagram, 59% on Snapchat… However, how do you explain that some become more addicted than others? on their accounts? Addicted to the point of developing “problematic social media use” (PSMU). This name, not officially recognized as a behavioral addiction by the World Health Organization (WHO), designates “problems in school and social functioning with characteristics bordering on addiction – mood swings, conflict, relapse, deception…” Can certain socio-economic determinants be involved? This is the question posed by an international team of researchers in psychology and social sciences from the universities of Padua (Italy), McGill, Montreal (Canada), Utrecht (Netherlands), Jyväskylä (Finland), and from Kinneret Academic College on the Sea of Galilee (Israel).
“We started from the abundant literature on the negative consequences of socio-economic inequalities on the physical and mental health of adolescents, and wanted to test whether the use of social media was a risk factor.explains Michela Lenzi, from the University of Padua (Italy). Considering that social comparison between peers is very common online, we specifically wanted to assess whether being exposed to highly unequal contexts (school and country) increases the likelihood of using these networks in problematic ways. »
To gather a large sample, the researchers used a WHO study, “Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC),” conducted every four years in Europe and Canada. Their research based on the analysis, in 2017 and 2018, of 179,049 children aged 11 to 15 attending school in 40 countries, was published on September 7 in Information, communication & society.
First test, the teenagers had to answer, under the supervision of a teacher, questions such as: “During the past year, have you…regularly found that you can’t think of anything but when you can use social media again?…tried to spend less time on social media , but without success?… regularly neglected other activities (eg hobbies, sports…) because you wanted to use social media?, etc., enumerates Michela Lenzi. Any young person who answered affirmatively to six such questions was identified as suffering from MUSP. » This was the case for an average of 7.2% of the approximately 180,000 young people surveyed..
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