Maartje Boer

THE COMPLEX ASSOCIATION BETWEEN SMU AND WELLBEING 233 8 The Complex Association Between Social Media Use Intensity and Adolescent Wellbeing: A Longitudinal Investigation of Five Factors That May Affect the Association Most adolescents spend a lot of time on social media nowadays, which raises concerns among many (Griffiths & Kuss, 2011). Social media refer to social network sites (SNS) and instant messengers (IM), such as Instagram and WhatsApp, respectively. Some researchers suggest that high levels of social media use (SMU) intensity are detrimental to adolescents’ wellbeing, for instance to their life satisfaction (Kelly et al., 2018; Twenge, Martin, et al., 2018). Other scholars suggest that the association between SMU intensity and wellbeing is more complex, however (Dienlin & Johannes, 2020). Review studies highlight that the overall association is weak, and that the direction and strength of the association is contingent on many theoretical and methodological factors, including the conceptualization of SMU and the used analytical approach (Meier & Reinecke, 2020; Odgers & Jensen, 2020; Orben, 2020a). Nevertheless, factors that may affect the association between SMU intensity and wellbeing are typically studied in isolation, painting an incomplete picture of the association. To enhance knowledge on the association between adolescents’ SMU intensity and wellbeing, the current study examined five factors that may affect this association. Using four waves of longitudinal data among Dutch secondary school adolescents, the current study tested how these five factors jointly affect the association between adolescents’ SMU intensity and wellbeing. The Association Between SMU Intensity andWellbeing Depends on the Type of SMU Activity the Adolescent Engages In Adolescents’ overall SMUintensity encompasses their intensityofengagement in different SMU activities, that is, their active and passive SMU. Active SMU refers to communication and content creation on social media, for example posting messages or photos on social media or chatting with others. Passive SMU refers to viewing other people’s messages or photos on social media and scrolling through social media feeds. Research suggests that active SMU is beneficial to adolescents’ wellbeing, whereas passive SMU is detrimental