engleski

Testing the passive mobile sensing and EMA to examine youth social media usage and mental health in Croatia

Systematic reviews of studies that have examined connection between social media usage and mental health offer mixed findings. Data indicates that frequency of use does not predict anxiety, nor depression, but it may be related to subjective well-being. Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) allows us to measure behaviour in a real time and in natural environment, as well as to observe both intraindividual and interindividual variability. However, in studies that used Ecological Momentary Assessment, social media usage was estimated with self-report measures, that can be affected by recall bias. This bias can be eliminated by using passive data collection, i.e., capturing app-time usage from participants’ smartphone. Therefore, the main aim of our study is to pilot EARS app in Croatia and to examine daily linkage between social media usage measured by passive data collection and mental health in freshmen students. This intensive longitudinal study will be conducted in Croatia during January and February 2022. At least 50 adolescents who entered first year of college in the year 2021 will participate in this study. After receiving their informed consent, we will use EARS smartphone app to conduct a 7-day longitudinal study, with participants reporting on depressive and anxiety symptoms, as well as mental well-being three times a day (in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening). EARS app will also collect passive data on social media app-time usage. We will use continuous-time structural equation modelling for data analysis. Based on the previous research, we expect that there will be no daily linkage between time spent on social media and depression, nor anxiety, but that more frequent social media usage will be related to less optimistic feeling about the future. These findings will have both theoretical and methodological contribution. It will give us clearer picture of connection between social media usage and mental health, while being one of the first studies using passive collection data for assessing frequency of use. Moreover, there is a lack of intensive longitudinal studies in Croatia, especially with adolescents as target population, and this study will be pioneering research with using EARS app in studying Croatian youth.

social media ; mental health ; passive data collection

nije evidentirano