Developmentally salient psychosocial characteristics, rumination, and compulsive social media use during the transition to college

Abstract

Background: As social media have become highly accessible, compulsive usage has become a concern. Research on compulsive social media usage is typically informed by earlier models of problematic Internet use. One limitation of many earlier models is their lack of attention to users’ developmental context. In this study, we focused on youth experiencing the transition to college, and proposed a model explaining the development of compulsive social media use by considering the developmental challenges characteristic of this period.

Method: Short-term longitudinal survey data from 219 college freshmen (M_age = 18.29; 74% female; 41% White, 38% Black) were used to examine a path model, in which three psychosocial characteristics (loneliness, identity distress, tendency of performing social comparison) were hypothesized to concurrently associate with rumination, which should predict compulsive social media use.

Results: Results showed that both identity distress and the tendency to perform social comparison on social media were related to higher rumination at Time 1, which, in turn, predicted higher compulsive social media use at Time 2. In contrast, loneliness was not associated with rumination at Time 1, and its indirect, prospective relationship with compulsive social media use was non-significant.

Implications: We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this particular model, as well as the research direction of incorporating developmental science into studies of compulsive technology use.

Keywords:

• Compulsive social media use
• emerging adult
• rumination
• loneliness
• identity distress
• social comparison
• social media addiction

Ethical statement

IRB approval and participant consent were obtained prior to data collection.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Notes

1 Social comparison refers to comparing oneself with others (Festinger 1954). It comes in two forms: the competition-based social comparison of ability and the information-based social comparison of opinion (Festinger 1954; Park and Baek 2018; Yang, Holden, Carter, and Webb 2018). This study focuses on the first form, as it is more relevant to the variables included. Competition-based social comparison centers on determining how well one is doing in terms of achievement, performance, competence, social skills, and so on, relative to others (Festinger 1954; Yang, Holden, and Carter 2018; Yang, Holden, Carter, and Webb 2018). The well-known upward social comparison and negative social comparison can be viewed as specific types of competition-based social comparison (Yang, Holden, Carter, and Webb 2018). For brevity, in this paper, we use the term ‘social comparison’ instead of ‘competition-based social comparison of ability’.

2 ‘Generalized pathological Internet use’ is in contrast with ‘specific pathological Internet use’. The former refers to pathological use of the Internet in a general sense, whereas the latter refers to pathological use associated with specific Internet content or functions, such as gaming, gambling, or accessing sexual content. Our study focused on generalized use of social media.