Adolescent social media use: cultivating and constraining competence

ABSTRACT

According to self-determination theory competence is a basic psychological need that is crucial for wellbeing. Social contexts strongly influence whether competence is supported or thwarted. Given that social media is a pervasive social context within adolescents’ lives, it can play a crucial role in competence development. Three qualitative methods were used to investigate mid-adolescents’ perspectives of how their social media use impacts competence. Participants included 36 students aged 15 years from four Australian schools. All participants completed a rich picture mapping activity and focus group discussions. A sub-sample of 11 students participated in follow-up interviews. Reflexive thematic analysis generated two overarching themes. The first theme cultivating competence includes sub-themes; enhancing social competencies, mastery experiences and goal accomplishment, and social media expertise. The second theme constraining competence includes sub-themes; ineffectance within the social media environment, interfering with sleep, and hindering learning. Findings demonstrated that social media contributes to today’s adolescents encountering unique experiences with regards to competence development. Furthermore, adolescents’ interactions on social media have broad implications for competence within online and offline realms. This study identifies aspects of social media use that can be targeted to help adolescents engage with social media in ways that cultivate rather than constrain competence.

KEYWORDS:

• Autonomy
• adolescents
• Wellbeing
• SDT
• self determination theory

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all participating schools for recognizing the importance of wellbeing research and for facilitating data collection. We would like to express our appreciation to the adolescents who willingly gave their time and shared their experiences to help further knowledge in this area.

Disclosure statement

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

Ethics

Ethics approval was obtained from the University of Melbourne Human Research Ethics Committee (ID 1,749,985) and the Victorian Department of Education and Training (ID 2018_003633).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

Dianne Vella-Brodrick and Monique West received no specific funding for this research project. Simon Rice was supported by a Career Development Fellowship from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia [GNT1158881], and a Dame Kate Campbell Fellowship from the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at The University of Melbourne.

Notes on contributors

Monique West

Monique West is a PhD student and Research Assistant at the Centre for Wellbeing Science, University of Melbourne. Her PhD investigates adolescents’ social media use through a Self-Determination Theory lens. Her research interests include exploration into factors that contribute to optimal and sustained wellbeing for young people.

Simon Rice

Simon Rice is a Principal Research Fellow at Orygen, Centre for Youth Mental Health, The University of Melbourne. Simon is a former Secondary teacher, and has led the development and piloting of a number of social media-based interventions for youth mental health. He also works as a Senior Clinical Psychologist at the Youth Mood Clinic (Orygen Specialist Programs) supporting young people experiencing severe and complex depression.

Dianne Vella-Brodrick

Dianne Vella-Brodrick holds the Gerry Higgins Chair in Positive Psychology and is Deputy Director and Head of Research at the Centre for Wellbeing Science, University of Melbourne. Dianne’s research interests include the development and evaluation of wellbeing programmes using innovative quantitative and qualitative methods. She specialises in working with young people in learning environments.