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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Addictive Behaviors
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1437109

RUNNING HEAD: Social media motives Scrolling for fun or to cope? Associations between social media motives and social media disorder symptoms in adolescents and young adults

Provisionally accepted
Lisa B. Thorell Lisa B. Thorell 1*Milena Autenrieth Milena Autenrieth 1Alice Riccardi Alice Riccardi 2Jonas Burén Jonas Burén 3Sissela B. Nutley Sissela B. Nutley 1
  • 1 Karolinska Institutet (KI), Solna, Sweden
  • 2 University of Bologna, Bologna, Emilia-Romagna, Italy
  • 3 University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Västergötland, Sweden

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

    Although not yet recognized as an official disorder, Social Media Disorder (SMD) has recently received considerable interest in the research. However, relatively little is known about underlying motives for social media use and to what extent motives show differential associations with SMD symptom severity and SMD diagnosis. The overall aim of the present study was therefore to examine motives for social media use in relation to 1) which motives are most common, 2) associations between motives and both SMD symptom severity and SMD diagnosis, and 3) the effects of sex and age. Data were collected through a digital survey (n=1820) and included both high school students (n=924) and university students (n=896). Six different motives were assessed, and SMD was measured in relation to both Heavy Involvement and Negative Consequences of social media use. The results showed that the most common social media use motives were Entertainment, Social Maintenance, and Information & Skills. However, it was the three least common motives -Social Compensation, Self-status, and Escape -that were most strongly associated with SMD symptom severity and SMD diagnosis. These three motives explained as much as 42% of the variance in negative consequences of social media use. Only a few small effects of sex or age were found. In sum, some social media use motives are much more strongly associated with SMD than others are. This could indicate that prevention and intervention programs should target these motives specifically, rather than focusing on social media use in general.

    Keywords: Conceptualization, Data curation, Funding acquisition, analysis, Supervision, Writing -original draft, Writing -review & editing, Milena Autenrieth: Data curation, Analysis, Writing -original draft, Writing -review & editing, Alice Riccardi: Data curation, Analysis, Writing -original draft, Writing -review & editing, Jonas Burén: Conceptualization, Data curation, Analysis, Writing -review and editing. Sissela B Nutley: Conceptualization, Data curation, Analysis, Writing -review and editing Social media, addiction, motives, social media disorder

    Received: 23 May 2024; Accepted: 22 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Thorell, Autenrieth, Riccardi, Burén and Nutley. 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: Lisa B. Thorell, Karolinska Institutet (KI), Solna, Sweden

    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.