Likes, Shares, and Symptoms: The Hidden Toll of Early Adolescents’ Social Media Use on Well-Being

Lisanne Vonk, Polina Putrik, Thérèse van Amelsvoort, Elien Vanluydt (), Philippe Delespaul, Mark Levels and Tim Huijts
Additional contact information
Lisanne Vonk: Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA), School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands
Polina Putrik: Department of Social Medicine, Care and Public Health Research Institute (CAPHRI), Faculty of Health Medicine and Life Sciences (FHML), Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands
Thérèse van Amelsvoort: Department of Psychiatry & Neuropsychology, Mental Health and Neuroscience Institute, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands
Elien Vanluydt: Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA), School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands
Philippe Delespaul: Department of Psychiatry & Neuropsychology, Mental Health and Neuroscience Institute, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands
Mark Levels: Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA), School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands
Tim Huijts: Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA), School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands

IJERPH, 2025, vol. 22, issue 1, 1-19

Abstract: Social media use has rapidly increased over the past decade, especially among young people. To obtain more insight into the potential negative associations with problematic social media use in Dutch early adolescents, we assessed its relation to self-reported well-being. We conducted a cross-sectional study with 585 students in their final year of primary school (11–12 years old) who completed a questionnaire during school hours. We examined the association between problematic social media use and psychosomatic complaints, as well as general life satisfaction and whether perceived social support and sex moderated these associations. Problematic social media use was associated with lower general life satisfaction, as well as all psychosomatic complaints, with the strongest association for having a bad mood or feeling irritated (OR = 3.08, 99% CI = 2.05–4.63). Most associations were not moderated by perceived social support or sex. Our findings indicate that the well-being of early adolescents may be affected by problematic social media use already in primary school. The association persisted regardless of the amount of perceived social support, and without strong gender differences. This suggests that the potential for limiting the potential negative consequences of problematic social media use through increasing social support is limited.

Keywords: social media; primary school; mental health; physical health; well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/22/1/131/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/22/1/131/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:22:y:2025:i:1:p:131-:d:1571953

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().