Active and Passive Social Media Use and Wellbeing

While much attention has been paid to the effects of social media use on wellbeing, it is important to recognize that not all social media use is the same. In particular, using social media actively (i.e., engaging with other users) may have different effects compared to passive use (i.e., scrolling). My research is currently investigating this using two different approaches.

Meta-analysis

This synthesizes existing research on active and passive social media use and wellbeing in order to identify 1) overall trends within the literature, and 2) factors that may be driving mixed findings. This manuscript is currently under revision at the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.

Intensive longitudinal investigation

I am currently collecting data on active and passive social media use and wellbeing using an intensive longitudinal design. This will help identify potentially bidirectional effects, as well as allow comparisons between within-person and between-person effects.