Parenting, Adolescent Social Media Use and The Effects on Life Satisfaction

Abstract

Social media has taken a more central role in adolescents’ lives in the past few years. This raises the question what the effects of different types of social media use (active and passive) are on adolescents’ life satisfaction and what role parents can play to prevent possible negative outcomes of social media use. This study examines whether internet specific rules and reactive restrictions can positively affect adolescents’ life satisfaction by regulating their social media use. Also, it examines whether quality of parental communication serve as a protective factor in the link between adolescent social media use and their life satisfaction. Data are retrieved from the Digital Youth Project, a longitudinal study of the Utrecht University. Online surveys are conducted on multiple high schools in the Netherlands, which resulted in a final sample of N= 1419. Results of this study show that internet specific rules and reactive restrictions do not have an effect on adolescents’ social media use and do not affect adolescents’ life satisfaction. Also, quality of parental communication does not serve as a protective factor for the life satisfaction of adolescents who use social media. Furthermore, interpretation of results and suggestions for future research are discussed.