Abstract
Though increasing attention is being paid to adolescents’ social media use, racially/ethnically-marginalized youth remain under-represented in that literature, and the effect of social media and its mechanism on these youth remain unclear. This study examined the effects of social media use on Black and Hispanic youth’s psychological and academic functioning, with an attempt to investigate the role of online racial discrimination in accounting for these associations. Participants consisted of 356 Black and Hispanic youth (Mage = 16.01 years, SD = 1.60), and 78% female. The findings revealed a positive association between social media use and academic self-efficacy. A negative indirect association also emerged where social media use was associated with more exposure to vicarious, but not individual, online racial discrimination, which was related to more depressive symptoms and in turn lower academic self-efficacy. There was no direct effect of social media use on Black and Hispanic youth’s anxiety symptoms, but its effect occurred indirectly via both individual and vicarious online racial discrimination. There was no evidence of group differences between Black and Hispanic youth. The findings confirm that social media is a space that proffers positive and negative effects on adolescents’ psychological and academic functioning, suggesting the need for unique protections for racially/ethnically marginalized youth as they explore these online environments.
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Data availability
The datasets analyzed during the current study are not publicly available but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request and with permission of Dr. Alvin Thomas.
Change history
28 October 2022
The error in the author’s biography has been corrected.
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Funding
The project was supported by the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program through the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), grant UL1TR002373.
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AT conceived of the study, participated in its design and coordination, performed the measurement, performed the statistical analysis, and drafted the manuscript; MJ performed the statistical analysis, participated in the design and interpretation of the data, and helped to draft the manuscript; HYC conceived of the study, participated in interpretation of the data, and drafted the manuscript; EC helped to draft the manuscript and interpretation of the data. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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This research complies with APA’s ethical standards in the treatment of human samples and with the highest ethical standards. All procedures performed in this study were approved by the ethics committee of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
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Active informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. Parents also gave their active consent for their child to participate.
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Thomas, A., Jing, M., Chen, HY. et al. Taking the good with the bad?: Social Media and Online Racial Discrimination Influences on Psychological and Academic Functioning in Black and Hispanic Youth. J Youth Adolescence 52, 245–257 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-022-01689-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-022-01689-z