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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry
Sec. Interventions for Adolescent Mental Health
Volume 3 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/frcha.2024.1269606
This article is part of the Research Topic Positive Psychological Characters and Internet Addiction among Adolescents: A Positive Psychology Perspective View all 3 articles

High school students' social media use predicts school engagement and burnout: The moderating role of social media self-control

Provisionally accepted
Jie Du Jie Du 1,2,3Yu Wang Yu Wang 4*
  • 1 VU Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • 2 Research Center for Enterprise Management, Chongqing Technology and Business University, Chongqing, China
  • 3 School of Business Administration, Chongqing Technology and Business University, Chongqing, China, Chongqing, China
  • 4 Management School, Chongqing University of Technology, Chongqing, China, Chongqing, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Students' social media use has quickly gained attention given the effect of considerable time spent on and widespread usage of social media on their development and success. The study aimed to examine whether high school students' social media use predicts more school engagement and less burnout for those who were more successful in controlling their social media use in goal-conflict situations. A sample of 107 Chinese high school students (Mage =19.21, SDage = 1.85, 68% female) participated in an online survey. The results showed that social media self-control failure moderated the relationship between general social media use (rather than social media use intensity) and school engagement. A simple effect test revealed that more general social media use predicted higher school engagement for students who were more successful in controlling their social media use. However, no moderation effect was observed of social media self-control failure on the relationship between social media use intensity (or general social media use) and burnout. The results partially supported the study demands-resources model and indicated the potential benefits of controllable social media use on high school students' engagement in the face of high academic demands.

    Keywords: Social Media, Self-Control, High school students, engagement, burnout

    Received: 30 Jul 2023; Accepted: 19 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Du and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Yu Wang, Management School, Chongqing University of Technology, Chongqing, China, Chongqing, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.