Deprivation’s role in adolescent social media use and its links to life satisfaction

Adolescents spend more time on social media than ever, making it necessary to understand the impact of social media use on their well-being. A largely unexplored, but potentially important, risk factor which may moderate the effects of social media on well-being is material deprivation. Using 10-wave longitudinal data from 23,155 adolescents collected between 2009 and 2019, we test whether adolescents who spend more time on social media than their own average subsequently report lower levels of well-being, and whether differences in deprivation are associated with heightened sensitivity to potential positive or negative effects of their social media use. We find that deprived adolescents have less access to social media. However, those adolescents from deprived households who do have social media access spend slightly more time using it. Although we find that deprived adolescents are less satisfied with their lives, deprivation does not seem to affect the longitudinal link from time spent on social media to life satisfaction.