IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp12834.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Social Media Extensive Use and Emotional and Behavioural Outcomes in Adolescence: Evidence from British Longitudinal Data

Author

Listed:
  • McNamee, Paul

    (University of Aberdeen)

  • Mendolia, Silvia

    (University of Torino)

  • Yerokhin, Oleg

    (University of Wollongong)

Abstract

We investigate the relationship between social media use and emotional and behavioural outcomes in adolescence using data from a large and detailed longitudinal study of teenagers from the UK. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study in economics to analyse the effect of social media use on adolescents' mental health. We use individual fixed effects, propensity score matching and treatment effects with Inverse Probability Weighted Regression Adjustment, controlling for a rich set of children's and family's characteristics and using comprehensive sensitivity analyses and tests to assess the potential role of unobserved variables. Our results show that prolonged use of social media (more than 4 hours per day) is significantly associated with poorer emotional health and more behavioural difficulties, and in particular decreased perception of self-value and increased incidence of hyperactivity, inattention and conduct problems. However, limited use of social media (less than 3 hours per day) has some positive effect on peer relationships.

Suggested Citation

  • McNamee, Paul & Mendolia, Silvia & Yerokhin, Oleg, 2019. "Social Media Extensive Use and Emotional and Behavioural Outcomes in Adolescence: Evidence from British Longitudinal Data," IZA Discussion Papers 12834, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12834
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp12834.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. AndrewE. Clark & Claudia Senik, 2010. "Who Compares to Whom? The Anatomy of Income Comparisons in Europe," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 120(544), pages 573-594, May.
    2. Marco Caliendo & Deborah A. Cobb-Clark & Arne Uhlendorff, 2015. "Locus of Control and Job Search Strategies," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 97(1), pages 88-103, March.
    3. Lawrence M. Berger & Jennifer Hill & Jane Waldfogel, 2005. "Maternity leave, early maternal employment and child health and development in the US," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(501), pages 29-47, February.
    4. Ruhm, Christopher J., 2008. "Maternal employment and adolescent development," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(5), pages 958-983, October.
    5. Currie, Janet & Stabile, Mark, 2006. "Child mental health and human capital accumulation: The case of ADHD," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(6), pages 1094-1118, November.
    6. Steffen Lohmann, 2015. "Information technologies and subjective well-being: does the Internet raise material aspirations?," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 67(3), pages 740-759.
    7. McDool, Emily & Powell, Philip & Roberts, Jennifer & Taylor, Karl, 2020. "The internet and children’s psychological wellbeing," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    8. Lundborg, Petter & Nilsson, Anton & Rooth, Dan-Olof, 2014. "Adolescent health and adult labor market outcomes," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 25-40.
    9. Alissa Goodman & Barbara Sianesi, 2005. "Early education and children's outcomes: low long do the impacts last?," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 26(4), pages 513-548, December.
    10. Scott Wallsten, 2013. "What Are We Not Doing When We're Online," NBER Working Papers 19549, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anne Nolan & Smyth, Emer, 2021. "Risk and protective factors for mental health and wellbeing in childhood and adolescence," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number RS120, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. McNamee, Paul & Mendolia, Silvia & Yerokhin, Oleg, 2021. "Social media use and emotional and behavioural outcomes in adolescence: Evidence from British longitudinal data," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 41(C).
    2. Peter, Frauke, 2016. "The effect of involuntary maternal job loss on children's behaviour and non-cognitive skills," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 43-63.
    3. Mendolia, Silvia & Walker, Ian, 2014. "The effect of personality traits on subject choice and performance in high school: Evidence from an English cohort," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 47-65.
    4. Peter, Frauke H. & Schober, Pia S. & Spiess, Katharina C., 2016. "Early Birds in Day Care: The Social Gradient in Starting Day Care and Children’s Non-cognitive Skills," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 62(4), pages 725-751.
    5. Silvia Mendolia & Ian Walker, 2014. "The effect of personality traits on subject choice and performance in high school," Working Papers 64907361, Lancaster University Management School, Economics Department.
    6. Silvia Mendolia & Ian Walker, 2014. "The Effect Of Noncognitive Traits On Health Behaviours In Adolescence," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(9), pages 1146-1158, September.
    7. Silvia Mendolia & Ian Walker, 2015. "Youth unemployment and the effect of personality traits," Working Papers 84097960, Lancaster University Management School, Economics Department.
    8. Mendolia, Silvia & Walker, Ian, 2014. "Do NEETs Need Grit?," IZA Discussion Papers 8740, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. McDool, Emily & Powell, Philip & Roberts, Jennifer & Taylor, Karl, 2016. "Social Media Use and Children's Wellbeing," IZA Discussion Papers 10412, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Apps, Patricia & Mendolia, Silvia & Walker, Ian, 2013. "The impact of pre-school on adolescents’ outcomes: Evidence from a recent English cohort," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 183-199.
    11. Frauke H. Peter, 2013. "Trick or Treat?: Maternal Involuntary Job Loss and Children's Non-cognitive Skills," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1297, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    12. McDool, Emily & Powell, Philip & Roberts, Jennifer & Taylor, Karl, 2020. "The internet and children’s psychological wellbeing," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    13. Silvia Mendolia & Ian Walker, 2015. "Youth unemployment and personality traits," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-26, December.
    14. Luca Maria Pesando & Valentina Rotondi & Manuela Stranges & Ridhi Kashyap & Francesco C. Billari, 2021. "The Internetization of International Migration," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 47(1), pages 79-111, March.
    15. Andrew E. Clark & Sarah Flèche & Claudia Senik, 2016. "Economic Growth Evens Out Happiness: Evidence from Six Surveys," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 62(3), pages 405-419, September.
    16. Yuda, Michio, 2020. "Childhood health and future outcomes: Evidence from panel surveys for the Japanese population," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    17. Fabio Sabatini & Francesco Sarracino, 2015. "Keeping up with the e-Joneses: Do online social networks raise social comparisons?," Papers 1507.08863, arXiv.org.
    18. Pinka Chatterji & Sara Markowitz, 2008. "Family Leave after Childbirth and the Health of New Mothers," NBER Working Papers 14156, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Laszlo Goerke, 2020. "An Efficiency-Wage Model with Habit Concerns about Wages," CESifo Working Paper Series 8428, CESifo.
    20. Dante Donati & Ruben Durante & Francesco Sobbrio & Dijana Zejcirovic, 2022. "Lost in the Net? Broadband Internet and Youth Mental Health," CESifo Working Paper Series 9676, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    fixed effects; mental health; social media;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12834. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.