Maartje Boer

CHAPTER 6 158 attach excessive importance to social media, and may therefore perceive the online world, which is heavily biased toward idealist self-presentations, as social reality. They may therefore not be able to place the overly flattered portrayals of others into perspective. As a result, they may engage in upward social comparisons . That is, they may perceive their peers’ appearances as superior to their own (Pera, 2018). Second, driven by their cravings for the potential social reward afforded by SMU, such as the reassurance to be noticed and appreciated by others (Veissière & Stendel, 2018), adolescents with SMU problems may engage in high levels of self-disclosure on social media (Blau, 2011). This, in turn, may make them vulnerable to cybervictimization (Weber et al., 2013). Finally, given that adolescents with SMU problems typically perceive SMU as their most important activity and that abstaining from it may cause stress or anxiety, they may displace offline social activities with peers and schoolwork activities with SMU. This may, third and fourth, go at the expense of face-to-face contact and school achievement (Salmela-Aro et al., 2017; Underwood & Ehrenreich, 2017; Wallsten, 2013). These four adverse processes, that may result from SMU problems, in turn, may decrease mental health. Accordingly, we expected that SMU problems would decrease mental health through upward social comparisons, cybervictimization, decreased face-to-face-contact, and decreased school achievements. These four processes may also underlie the reverse proposed effect, that is, the effect of lower mental health on SMU problems (Figure 6.1). First, the negative self-perceptions that adolescentswithpoorermental health typically have may reinforce upward social comparisons after exposure to their peers’ idealized appearances on social media (Nesi et al., 2017). Second, adolescents with mental health impairments may face a higher risk of cybervictimization, as their vulnerabilities may make them an easy target for aggressive peers (C. A. Rose & Tynes, 2015; Van den Eijnden et al., 2014), Third, they may also have less face-to-face contact with peers, because peers may perceive them as less attractive to be friends with (Connolly et al., 1992). Fourth, poor mental health may also be a source of decreased schoolwork achievements (Brännlund et al., 2017). In order to compensate and/or find relief for these additional adversities, that may stem from poor mental health, adolescents may becomemore dependent upon and preoccupied with SMU. This maladaptive coping strategy may ultimately elicit SMU problems (Griffiths et al., 2014). We