Disentangling Between-Person Level From Within-Person Level Relationships: How Sharing Alcohol References on Facebook and Alcohol Use Are Associated Over Time

ABSTRACT

A growing body of research supports that publicly displayed alcohol references on social media are positively associated with alcohol use among college students. However, unaddressed questions remain, particularly what types of alcohol references (i.e., alcohol use vs. intoxication) have such influence, and whether the association between sharing alcohol references on social media and drinking behavior is a within-person effect, or rather reflects group differences. The current study (N = 338) used secondary data analysis of a four-wave longitudinal dataset collected as part of a larger project, which evaluated college students’ Facebook profiles and their alcohol use across their college experience. Using a random intercept cross-lagged panel analysis, we found empirical support for a positive relationship between sharing alcohol references and alcohol use at between-person level rather than the within-person level. Moreover, there was a negative relationship between sharing intoxication alcohol references on Facebook and alcohol use at the within-person level. This means that we find more support for the idea that the association between sharing alcohol references on social media and drinking behavior reflects group differences, rather than true self-effect of social media use.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability

This manuscript uses data from a larger dataset (“Using Media to Understand Mechanisms of Behavior Change among College Students” https://reporter.nih.gov/search/WJ9iNNm2A02_9_UJlkpw9A/project-details/8710129#publications).

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2022.2138443

Several other papers have used these data in the past, but most studies have only used one or two of the four waves of data. Three other studies have used all 4 waves of data, and thus use the same dataset as this study: To examine linguistic predictors of problematic drinking in alcohol-related Facebook posts (Van Swol et al., 2020), to explore perceptions of friends’ approval and students’ drinking in relation to alcohol-related posting (Steers et al., 2019), and to study patterns of alcohol, intoxication and abstinence posts on Facebook throughout the undergraduate experience (Moreno et al., 2021). To increase transparency and clarify the unique contribution of this paper, we have provided an ethics statement as online supplementary material (Appendix 1).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by grant R01DA031580-03 which is supported by the Common Fund, managed by the OD/Office of Strategic Coordination (OSC); Research Foundation Flanders [1239220N]