(PS10-A5) Examining Momentary Associations Between Social Media Coping and Positive and Negative Affect in High-risk Adolescents

Social media use has become the norm for adolescents and research shows that it has implications for well-being and mental health (Keles et al., 2020). How adolescents respond to daily stress impacts their well-being. Social media can serve as a coping tool to provide social support, reduce negative emotions, and help with problem solving (Wolfers and Utz, 2022). Using social media to cope has been linked to lower anxiety and better well-being for adolescents in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic (Cauberghe et al., 2020; Maftei et al., 2022). Research suggests adolescents perceive using online content to manage stress as effective and using online resources to cope has been linked to poor recovery of negative affect after stress (Duvenage et al., 2020). Using online resources for emotional support and distraction in adolescents has been associated with reduced momentary negative affect (Modecki et al., 2021). Limited research has examined whether social media as a coping tool impacts negative or positive affect in daily life. Importantly, little is known about how adolescents use social media to cope during high-risk clinical transition periods. The current study examines the relationship between adolescent positive and negative affect and use of social media coping. We aim to examine how adolescents use social media to cope with daily stressors, perceive social media as interfering with their day-to-day life, and whether social media coping predicts momentary negative or positive affect in daily life after psychiatric hospitalization.

The final sample included N = 20 youth ages 12-17 (M = 15.25, SD = 1.65; 86.7% female; 80% cisgender) with a past 30-day history of suicide ideation or attempts. The sample was predominantly white non-Hispanic (73.3%). Participants completed a 2-week ecological momentary assessment (EMA) after discharge from psychiatric inpatient or partial hospital treatment that included 5 surveys per day about their affect and use of social media to cope with stress. Participants also reported whether they perceived social media to interfere with their day-to-day life at each survey.

Youth reported using social media for distraction by messaging with others (endorsed on 26.9% of prompts across all participants) and by creating and posting content (28.6%) to try to feel better. They less frequently endorsed using social media to avoid their problems (9%), to vent their problems (4.5%), or to reach out directly to people for support (4.9%) to regulate emotions. Youth reported that overall social media had a moderately positive impact on their mood (M = 4.97, SD = 2.59) but did not have a negative impact on their mood (M = 1.34; SD = 1.24). Youth reported social media did not interfere with their daily functioning (M = 1.77; SD = 1.94). We will utilize multilevel modeling to examine relationships between daily positive and negative affect and the use of social media coping strategies.

In summary, adolescents are using social media to cope with stress in their daily lives. Findings will inform our understanding of how coping via social media impacts both positive and negative affect in daily life, and may inform how we think about teaching coping skills in the social media context for youth at high risk for suicide and other mental health concerns.