Lecture 9 Media use 

• Adolescents are heavy users of media.  

• How does this media use impact the development? (2) 

• How does adolescent development influence media use? (1) 

Moderate discrepancy hypothesis (MDH) 

• Children and adolescents are predominantly attracted to entertainment that deviates only moderately from the things they know, understand, and are capable of.  

• Children and adolescents are not or less interested in entertainment that deviates too much from their existing framework and experiences.  

• Developmental approach: Hypothesis is a viable explanation of why media preferences differ so much among different age groups. As children develop, they learn and understand more, so what attracts them in media also changes.  

• Children and adolescents like to be challenged, but not too much. It has to relate to the things they know.  

• Media can be used to gratify certain needs. Individuals select media to gratify needs that they have (e.g., needs to lift your mood (> choose a happy song)) 

• Needs are determined by developmental level 

• Depends on different situational and individual factors, including development 

Five main developmental characteristics that inform needs and gratifications 

1. Identity exploration  

2. Autonomy and self-efficacy  

3. Peer orientation (and romantic partners) 

4. Emotionality and sensation seeking 

Physical development (hormonal changes) 

• Changes in appearance 

• Interest in sex (curious and questions) 

• Impact on mood (moody, fluctuations in mood) 

Link to media 

• Needs in media preferences  

• Adolescents have a need for information: insecure about bodies, interest in sex > what should a body look like? What is attractive? 

• Media can used to seek advice about these topics 

• Risky consequence: e.g., boys asking girls for nude selfies, difficult to oversee the consequences  

Physical development 

• Pruning: decline grey matter > more efficient processing 

• Cell bodies and synapses  

• ‘Use it or lose it’ 

• Explains why after this process of pruning, it becomes much harder to learn new things 

Cognitive development 

• Formal operational thinking: logical, abstract hypothetical, problem-solving, interest in future 

• Only completely in place at the end of adolescence  

• Adolescents will switch between concrete and formal operational thinking 

• Disadvantages:  

• Egocentrism is on overdrive. They imagine this audience: what would other people think about what I’m doing? 

• This all has implications for media use 

Media implications 

• More complexity in story lines  

• More complex characters  

• Topic that deal with big world issues > war movies, science fiction 

• Fast-pace media which stimulates problem-solving skills 

• Multiple levels: not easily get bored 

• Adolescents get easily bored 

• Dopamine is important for reward system, makes you feel satisfied 

• During adolescence, changes in dopamine: overall levels of dopamine are lower, but skyrocket in exciting situations 

• Increased cognitive capacities + changes in dopamine > boredom, sensation seeking > alcohol use, media use etc. 

Sensation seeking 

• Sensation seeking is the tendency to seek out novel, varied, and highly stimulating experiences, and the willingness to take risks to attain them  

• Focus on immediate rewards  

• Peaks during adolescence and then decreases 

Link to media 

• Need for excitement and risk taking 

• Online gambling, sexting, talking to complete strangers 

• Imagining the perspectives of others on “overdrive” 

• Metacognition > what do others think of me? 

• What do others think of me? 

Socio-emotional development 

Developmental tasks: 

• Autonomy: independent of their parents, own person 

• Identity: who am I? Who do I want to be? 

• Intimacy: learn how to form meaningful relationships, how to maintain these relationships 

These developmental tasks determine needs (and media use) 

Adolescents need to learn two important communication skills: 

• Self-presentation: how to present yourself to others, what kind of aspects of identity given the audience (normative values of the audience) 

• Self-disclosure: what information are you willing to share? How much?  

• Adolescents learn these skills through feedback. They try out and see how people respond to that. Social media can help with this. 

Affordances of social media 

• Social media provides a sense of control because of these affordances 

Autonomy 

• Social media provide control over communication  

• Media allow individuals to be producers of content  

• Media provide information about how to solve problems > more in control and independent 

Identity 

• Self-concept and self-esteem  

• Exploration  

• Behave in specific way > how do peers react? 

• Developing self-esteem, fluctuations  

• Gender identity: gender roles become less rigid, much more flexible in what it means to be a woman/man.  

• This identity formation relates to specific needs: 

• Need for identity-relevant information  

• Need for role models  

• Need for identity experiments 

Identity exploration 

• Media provide relevant identity information 

• Media provide role models 

• Identifying with and learning from media characters 

Intimacy 

• Relationships 

• Cliques and best friends  

• Drama: they are still learning on how this works (loyalty etc.) 

• Strong need to fit in & validation (social antenna)  

• Subcultures: music taste, sports 

• “Puppy love”  

• Practicing for later sexual relationships  

• Fear of rejection  

• Need for intimacy 

Subcultures and para-social relationships with idols (you can see them everyday, on what they are posting etc.) 

Part 2 - Social media effects 

Initial assumption: social media offer poor communication (e.g., miscommunication, superficial, less personal) 

Hyperpersonal theory of communication (Walther, 1996) 

• Poses: 

• CMC is friendlier, more social, more personal and more intimate than FTF communication 

• This is because of the reduced cues in CMC 

• Walther: “it surpasses normal interpersonal levels”  

• Reduced cues > sender has opportunity to present himself in most optimal way. The channel facilitates this. The receiver has to fill in the blanks (because of reduced cues) > overevaluation of the sender/message > positive feedback circle > more intimacy and affection 

Evidence for hyperpersonal communication theory – experiment 

• Online dating experiment: two groups (text-based condition, videocall condition). After initial getting to know each other > measure social attraction and romantic attraction 

• Then: face to face meeting 

• Measure social attraction and romantic attraction 

• In the text only condition social attraction was highest > this remained even after face-to-face interaction 

• Hyperpersonal effect existed only in women 

Social media effects 

1. Physical and social self-esteem 

2. Mental wellbeing 

3. Empathy 

Social media and self-esteem 

• Assumption: social media influences self-esteem > lower.  

Social media and body image (physical self-esteem) 

• Social media use influences body dissatisfaction (in boys and girls, small effect) 

• Social comparison 

• Downward comparison (with people who are worse off) > positive for self-esteem 

• Horizontal comparison (with people who are equal) > not really influence 

• Upward comparison (with people who are better off) > negative influence 

• Upward comparison is stronger on social media than with tradition forms of media! 

• Social media provides opportunity to present yourself in most optimal way 

Social media and social self-esteem: feedback 

• Cross-sectional findings: Social media – more positive feedback – more social self-esteem  

• Longitudinal findings (over time):  

• Social self-esteem predicts more social media use  

• not the other way round! 

• Overview with different processes 

• Social comparison > negative influence on the self 

• Receive a lot of positive feedback > positive influence on the self 

• Self-reflective processes 

Social media and mental wellbeing 

• Social comparison > depressed? 

• Longitudinal research: digital technology use and wellbeing in adolescents: negative relationship. But very important to notice that this relationship was very small 

Study from Sweden: social media use, internalizing and externalizing behaviors 

•  

• Results 

• If we compare individuals with each other we find a relationship between social media and mental wellbeing  

• More social media > higher problems 

• No relationship on an individual level: if someone starts using more social media, their mental wellbeing does not change 

• So: evidence for relation but no causation! 

Social media and empathy 

• Hardly any empirical studies 

• Social media > positive change in affective empathy + cognitive empathy 

• But: small effect 

Why this positive effect? 

• Because of Asynchronicity and Accessibility  

• More communication opportunities with more people  

• Additional instead of displacement in communication 

• Learning from others’ posts  

• Questions remain:  

• Differences in type of social media use? 

• Differences in context?  

• Differences between individuals? 

Why are social media effects small or mixed? 

• “finding orchids in a field of dandelions”  

Differential susceptibility to media effects model 

• Not all children are influenced in the same way 

• Three different kinds of factors that make children more susceptible to effects of social media: 

• Dispositional: genes etc. 

• Developmental: e.g., age 

• Social: parents, peers, siblings 

• Two ways: 

• Direct influence 

• Moderating the effects