However, when accounting for demographic and family-level factors, between-person differences were not significant<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n
By Lori Solomon HealthDay Reporter<\/b>
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FRIDAY, May 23, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Higher social media use is associated with greater subsequent depressive symptoms in children and adolescents, according to a study published online May 21 in JAMA Network Open<\/em>.<\/p>\n Jason M. Nagata, M.D., from the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues evaluated longitudinal associations between social media use and depressive symptoms in a prospective cohort study. The analysis included data from 11,876 participants (aged 9 to 10 years) in four annual waves of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (October 2016 to October 2018), with time spent on social media self-reported at three-year follow-up.<\/p>\n The researchers found that when adjusting for stable between-person differences and covariates, within-person increases in social media use above the person-level mean were associated with elevated depressive symptoms from year 1 to year 2 (\u03b2, 0.07; 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 0.01 to 0.12; P = 0.01) and from year 2 to year 3 (\u03b2, 0.09; 95 percent CI, 0.04 to 0.14; P < 0.001). There were no associations between depressive symptoms and subsequent social media use at any interval. When accounting for demographic and family-level factors, between-person differences in social media use were not associated with depressive symptoms (\u03b2, \u22120.01; 95 percent CI, \u22120.04 to 0.02; P = 0.46).<\/p>\n “The findings suggest that clinicians should provide anticipatory guidance regarding social media use for young adolescents and their parents,” the authors write.<\/p>\n