Maartje Boer

CHAPTER 8 258 impairments in wellbeing, regardless of whether this concerns engaging in more active or more passive SMU activities. Higher SMU intensity may be considered as normative adolescent behavior that contributes to adolescents’ individual development and daily interaction with peers (Granic et al., 2020; Valkenburg & Peter, 2011). Nevertheless, our findings imply that risks to wellbeing could arise when adolescents report SMU problems, indicated by symptoms of addiction (e.g., loss of control over SMU). Therefore, investing in the prevention, early detection, and treatment of problematic SMU may be warranted. Yet, our findings also showed that for a particular group of adolescents, increases in SMU intensity are indicative of decreased wellbeing. Research focusing on identifying the individual characteristics that make adolescents vulnerable to negative SMU effects could provide directions for targeted prevention or intervention programs. Although we tested many ways in which adolescents’ SMU and their wellbeing could be related, the association may be dependent on more factors that were not addressed in this study. First, it may depend on whom adolescents have contact with on social media. For example, longitudinal research on adults showed that receiving Facebook messages from close friends increased wellbeing, whereas receiving such messages from acquaintances did not change wellbeing (Burke & Kraut, 2016). Other research showed that adolescents who reported more Instagram use with close friends reported more friendship closeness than adolescents who showed less Instagram use with close friends (Pouwels et al., 2021). This association was not observed with regards to Instagram use without close friends (Pouwels et al., 2021). Second, the association may depend on the wellbeing outcome being studied. Meta-analytic findings indicate that SMU intensity has different associations with self-esteem and social capital than with life satisfaction (Meier & Reinecke, 2020). Furthermore, research suggests that the association is different for positive indicators of wellbeing than for negative indicators, for example depression and negative affect (Huang, 2017; Wirtz et al., 2020). Third, the association may be contingent on the social media platform used. More specifically, the use of highly visual social media, such as Instagram and Snapchat, may induce more impact than less visual social media, such as Facebook and Twitter. Highly visual social media are mainly focused on uploading visual content, including photos and videos, and allow users to edit this content in more appealing ways using filters (McCrory et