TLDR
Social media is linked with lower life satisfaction most strongly at certain teenage ages, and these ages differ for girls and boys. Feeling less satisfied with life can also lead to using social media more later.
Summary
This content was automatically synthesized by Credo's AI models directly from the original source text.
AI summaries can make mistakes — double-check important details against the original source.
1 Study Aim
The authors aimed to test whether adolescence (the teenage and young-adult years) contains specific developmental windows (ages when people may be more sensitive) to social media’s relationship with life satisfaction. They also examined whether these windows differ by self-reported sex and whether social media use and life satisfaction influence each other over time. The study asked whether social media matters more at particular ages than at others.
2 Study Design
The study analyzed two UK datasets. Understanding Society provided cross-sectional comparisons (snapshots at different ages) for 72,287 people aged 10–80, plus longitudinal data (repeated measurements over time) from 17,409 people aged 10–21. The Millennium Cohort Study added data from 11,724 participants aged 13–14. Participants estimated daily social media use and rated life satisfaction. The authors used a Random-Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Model (RI-CLPM), a method separating personal differences from year-to-year changes, to test whether one measure predicted the other one year later. Analyses included household income and neighborhood deprivation as controls. The researchers compared people across ages and tracked annual changes within individuals.
3 Findings
The study found that social media use and life satisfaction were most negatively related during adolescence. Among younger adolescents, this relationship was stronger for females, especially from ages 12–15. Longitudinal analyses found age-specific windows: higher use predicted lower life satisfaction one year later for females aged 11–13, males aged 14–15, and both sexes at age 19. Lower life satisfaction also predicted higher later social media use, regardless of age or sex. Effects were small, and the observational, self-reported data cannot establish cause and effect. The authors recommend studying puberty, social changes, individual differences, and different kinds of social media to guide targeted support. Social media may matter more at certain teenage ages, but it does not affect everyone in the same way.