Abstract
Social media holds promise as a technology to facilitate social engagement, but may displace offline social activities. Adolescents with ASD are well suited to capitalize on the unique features of social media, which requires less decoding of complex social information. In this cross-sectional study, we assessed social media use, anxiety and friendship quality in 44 adolescents with ASD, and 56 clinical comparison controls. Social media use was significantly associated with high friendship quality in adolescents with ASD, which was moderated by the adolescents’ anxiety levels. No associations were founds between social media use, anxiety and friendship quality in the controls. Social media may be a way for adolescents with ASD without significant anxiety to improve the quality of their friendships.
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Author Contribution
GS conceived of the study, participated in data collection and analysis, and wrote the manuscript. CM led the data analysis and writing of the results section. MO led the data gathering and data entry. MR was involved in recruitment, data gathering and reviewing the manuscript. ZQ was involved in recruitment, data gathering, and design of the study. JM was involved in the design of the study, recruitment, and reviewing the manuscript. EL was involved in designing the study, supervising the statistical analysis, and reviewing the manuscript. FV participated in conceiving the study, supervised the data gathering, and reviewed the manuscript. WS was invovled in the design of the study, reviewing of data analysis, and planning and reviewing of the manuscript. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript.
Funding
Gerrit van Schalkwyk acknowledges the support of the AACAP Pilot Award supported by Pfizer. Gerrit van Schalkwyk and Fred Volkmar acknowledge the support of the Yale Child Study Center Associates.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
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van Schalkwyk, G.I., Marin, C.E., Ortiz, M. et al. Social Media Use, Friendship Quality, and the Moderating Role of Anxiety in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder. J Autism Dev Disord 47, 2805–2813 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-017-3201-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-017-3201-6