Maartje Boer

CHAPTER 1 12 cravings towards SMU. Yet, the two SMU behaviors are also different, because some adolescents who use SMU intensively may be well able to regulate their SMU. Furthermore, some problematic users may not show extremely high levels of SMU intensity, for example when they have a small online social network to interact with, but are nonetheless preoccupied with social media by constantly thinking it. Overall, SMU problems and intensity are related, but different dimensions of SMU. SMU and Wellbeing With the increasingpopularityof socialmediaamongyouth (Anderson&Jiang, 2018), both concerns and research on the potential impact of adolescents’ SMU on their wellbeing increased considerably in the past decade. To illustrate, a basic search assignment in search engine Scopus on adolescents’ SMU and wellbeing in the period between 2016 and 2020 returned 4,081 publications (e.g., articles, book chapters), whereas for the period between 2011 and 2015, the same search assignment yielded 755 publications 1 . There are concerns that SMU in general (often without making a distinction between SMU intensity or SMU problems) is detrimental to various domains of wellbeing (Underwood & Ehrenreich, 2017; Unicef, 2017). For example, it has been argued that SMU impairs mental health, such as increasing symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)-symptoms (Wiederhold, 2019), although studies testing this suggestion are scarce. The ongoing interruptions by social media notifications may reinforce intensive task- switching between online and offline activities. This may be detrimental to adolescents’ capability of filtering relevant from irrelevant information, which may reinforce attention deficits (Baumgartner et al., 2017). Consistent with this suggestion, cross-sectional studies showed that the higher adolescents’ SMU intensity , the higher their level of ADHD-symptoms (Barry et al., 2017; Levine et al., 2007). Also, research among Dutch adolescents showed that problematic SMU was associated with inattention and impulsivity (Van den Eijnden et al., 2016). In addition, it has been put forward that SMU harms other aspects of mental health, for example that it induces depressive symptoms and impairs life satisfaction. One explanation for this suggestion is that social media 1 Boolean search term = (( "social media us*" OR "social network site us*" OR "instagram us*" OR "facebook us*" ) AND ( wellbeing OR "well-being" ) AND adolescents ).