Between the ages of 11 and 15, the quality of life of adolescents can be disrupted by excessive use of social networks.
- A team of researchers studied the link between social media use and life satisfaction in young people
- The periods when adolescents are the most vulnerable diverge according to sex without it being known yet exactly why
- In France 87% of 12 year olds have their own smartphone according to a study on social media and young people
According to a study by the University of Cambridge published on Monday in Kind Communicationgirls and boys may be more vulnerable to the negative effects of social media use at different times during their adolescence: particularly between 11 and 13 years old for girls and between 14 and 15 years old for boys.
17,400 young people aged 10 to 21
In just over ten years, social networks have changed our relationship to the world and to others and even after years of research, great uncertainty remains, particularly concerning the link between the use of social media and well-being. To investigate the question, a team of scientists including psychologists, neuroscientists and modellers looked at the complex relationship between social media use and self-reported life satisfaction by analyzing two UK datasets comprising some 84,000 individuals between the ages of 10 and 80. These sets included longitudinal data – that is, data that follows individuals over a period of time – on 17,400 young people between the ages of 10 and 21.
They thus found key periods of adolescence where the use of social media was associated with a decrease in life satisfaction 12 months later.
Conversely, they also found that teens with below-average life satisfaction use social media more a year later. Thus, it appears that the negative impacts go in both directions, which further complicates the study of the relationship between young people and social networks.
Developmental sensitivity?
They noted gender differences and the reasons could be various. Indeed, among girls, social media use between the ages of 11 and 13 was associated with lower life satisfaction one year later, whereas among boys, this phenomenon occurred. between the ages of 14 and 15. Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, professor of psychology and cognitive neuroscience at Cambridge and co-author of the study, said: “It is not possible to pinpoint the precise processes underlying this vulnerability. Adolescence is a time of cognitive, biological and social changes, all of which are interrelated, making it difficult to disentangle one factor from another.For example, it is not yet clear what may be due to changes in hormone or brain development and what may be due to how an individual interacts with their peers.”
For both women and men, social media use at age 19 was again associated with lower life satisfaction one year later. According to the researchers, although further research is needed, it is possible that at this age, social changes – such as leaving home or starting work – make us particularly vulnerable.
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