Effects of social media on subjective well-being of adolescents

Social media use (SMU) among adolescents has increased dramatically over the last decades and now pervades their everyday social lives. This descriptive review paper examines whether and how the use of social media by adolescents is associated with their mental health and subjective well-being. Because social media allows adolescent users to explore self-identity and express emotions and thoughts, use of social media becomes an important determinant of their subjective well-being. The present paper, looking into the available research evidence, shows that adolescents’ use of social media affects their quality of life and subjective well-being, both positively and negatively which has been revealed by both empirical research and a number of meta-analytic reviews in this area. However, research findings have been mixed and sometimes inconclusive regarding the effects of SMU on subjective well-being of adolescents. This has been due to the diversity of social media platforms used by adolescents, differences in active and passive use of social media, and differential role of social media addiction on their subjective well-being and quality of life, in addition to a number of methodological and measurement problems related to research on social media effects on adolescents which can be crucial for inconclusive and sometimes contradictory findings. The paper concludes that although social media causes poor mental health and subjective well-being among adolescents, every different aspects of SMU cause a variety ofpositive and negative effects on their subjective well-being. Finally, a number of preventive methods for protecting adolescents from negative and harmful effects of social media use have been discussed.