Investigating the Longitudinal Relationships Between Active Parental and Peer Mediation and Adolescents’ Social Media Literacy on the Positivity Bias

ABSTRACT

Adolescents are assumed to develop social media literacy (SML) through interacting with different agents, such as parents and peers. However, research exploring this assumption is lacking. The current two-wave panel study (N = 1,007) partly addressed this gap by exploring the interrelationships between perceived active parental/peer mediation and adolescents’ SML (i.e. a cognitive and an affective dimension). These links were examined within the context of the social media positivity bias. Active parental mediation at Time 1 (T1) related to one aspect of cognitive SML, awareness of the presence of the positivity bias, and affective SML at Time 2 (T2). Active peer mediation at T1 did not relate to SML on the positivity bias at T2. Awareness of the presence of the positivity bias at T1 was associated with active parental mediation at T2. No age differences were found. Results suggest that parents play a role in adolescents’ SML on the positivity bias.

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/wm7a9/)

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/wm7a9/

Notes

¹ The larger project was a three-wave panel study of adolescent social media usage, well-being, and environment. The present study used data from only the first two waves because the relevant constructs were only measured at these two waves. For additional information, please contact the corresponding author.

² The focus groups and in-depth interviews were used to formulate the items for cognitive SML. Through inductive coding, overall themes emerged from the qualitative data to categorize the text excerpts. These themes and illustrative quotes are displayed in Table S7 in the SM. The formulation of the affective SML items mainly followed the validated FEEL-KJ instrument to assess adaptive emotion regulation strategies among youth. The qualitative data gave us insights on the reasons for needing adaptive emotion control in the positivity bias context.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Foundation–Flanders (FWO-Vlaanderen) under Grant 11D3119N. Financial support was granted for conducting the research but the funder played no role in preparing the article and designing the study

Notes on contributors

Lara Schreurs

Lara Schreurs (PhD) is a postdoctoral researcher at the School for Mass Communication Research, KU Leuven, Belgium, supervised by professor Laura Vandenbosch. In her PhD-project, for which she received a fellowship of the Research Foundation–Flanders (FWO), Lara specifically focused on the role of social media literacy within the social media-effects literature.

Laura Vandenbosch

Laura Vandenbosch (PhD) is an associate professor at the School for Mass Communication Research (BOF-ZAP research professorship grant), KU Leuven, Belgium. The relations between media and well-being are the core subject of her research, leading to international publications in several fields including developmental psychology, sexology, body image, social relationships and communication theory.