Wellbeing, social media addiction and coping strategies among Chilean adolescents during the pandemic
Journal
Frontiers in Psychiatry
ISSN
1664-0640
Date Issued
2023
Type
Resource Types::text::journal::journal article
URL Institutional Repository
Abstract
<jats:sec><jats:title>Introduction</jats:title><jats:p>During the COVID-19 pandemic, adolescents had to deal with a range of mental health problems that has increased social media addiction levels with adverse effects on life satisfaction. Previous studies have explored coping mechanisms to deal with this addiction problem, but did not consider the need to simultaneously cope with different dimensions. Therefore, our study aimed to examine the moderating effect of various coping mechanisms on the relationship between social media addiction and adolescent life satisfaction.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Methods</jats:title><jats:p>Self-report questionnaires were applied to 1290 secondary school students (age mean = 16.03, <jats:italic>SD</jats:italic> = 1.27, range: 14 to 19; and 57% female). An exploratory and a confirmatory factor analysis were performed to determine the factor structure of the Brief-Cope 28 scale. Then, a descriptive and correlational analysis of the variables and a multiple linear regression analysis was performed.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Results</jats:title><jats:p>We found that the social media addiction risk was negatively associated with life satisfaction, adaptive strategies were positively correlated to life satisfaction, and maladaptive strategies were negatively correlated to it. Also, a moderation model was evaluated in which four stress management strategies, namely acceptance and perspective-taking, seeking socio-emotional support, active coping, and maladaptive strategies all conditioned the relationship between social media addiction risk and life satisfaction after controlling for demographic variables and the specific strategies of using comedy, religion and substance use. Results indicate additive and multiplicative effects of management strategies for stressful situations in the studied relationship. Seeking socio-emotional support and active coping were positively related to life satisfaction and maladaptive strategies were negatively associated with it. Multiplicative effects indicate that the relationship between the social media addiction risk and life satisfaction depends only on the acceptance and perspective taking that adolescents report. When adolescents reported having low or average levels of acceptance and perspective taking, there was a negative correlation with general life satisfaction, a connection that grew markedly stronger. In contrast, no connection between social media addiction and life satisfaction was detected for adolescents who report higher levels of acceptance and perspective-taking.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Discussion</jats:title><jats:p>Abuse of social media and the use of maladaptive stress coping strategies were risk factors that decreased life satisfaction among adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic period.</jats:p></jats:sec>
Cite this document
Varela, J. J., PĂ©rez, J. C., RodrĂguez-Rivas, M. E., Chuecas, M. J., & Romo, J. (2023). Wellbeing, social media addiction and coping strategies among Chilean adolescents during the pandemic. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 14, 1211431. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1211431
Subjects
adolescents
;
coping
;
covid-19
;
life satisfaction
;
social media addiction
;
wellbeing
;
adolescent
;
adult
;
article
;
brief cope inventory
;
chilean
;
content validity
;
controlled study
;
coping behavior
;
coronavirus disease 2019
;
correlation analysis
;
demography
;
electronic spreadsheet
;
emotional support
;
exploratory factor analysis
;
female
;
high school
;
human
;
life satisfaction
;
likert scale
;
major clinical study
;
male
;
multiple linear regression analysis
;
pain intensity
;
self report
;
social media
;
social media addiction
;
social network
;
stress management
;
wellbeing