Communicatiewetenschap
Master Thesis’s Entertainment Communication Graduate School of Communication
University of Amsterdam Britt Willemsen (10001841)
Lecturer: 2 February 2018
Master Thesis:
Social Media Use and Teens’ loneliness: What role does parasocial interaction and quality of friendships play?
Abstract
Social media plays an important role in the life of teens. It is a great way to connect with peers and it is positive for communication and social skills. Teens not only use social media to interact with each other. Interaction with celebrities has become a big part of their social media behaviour. In the literature there is no conclusive answer about the relationship between social media and loneliness. Therefore the aim of this study was to look at the relationship between social media use and loneliness and in addition to examine the role of quality of friendships and parasocial interaction in this relationship. A cross-sectional survey was conducted at a secondary school in the Netherlands. The results showed no significant results between social media use, parasocial interaction and loneliness. It did appear that quality of friendships was negatively related to loneliness. The results are discussed in the light of the theories and research on social media and loneliness.
Introduction
Teens in 2017 have lived longer with social media than without. Social media is deeply integrated in their lives. For teens, social media is a great way to connect with peers. Furthermore it enhances communication and social skills (O'Keeffe & Clarke-Pearson, 2011).
Previous research looked into the effects and consequences of teens using social media. On the positive side, studies found that social media can decrease loneliness and depression (Shaw & Gant, 2004). In addition, Steinfield, Ellison, & Lampe (2008) found out that social media use is positively related to self-esteem. However, on the negative side, other research shows that social media use is associated with depression, decreased social well-being, more loneliness and more stress (Kraut et al., 1998; Sidani et al., 2016).
The different effects or consequences that social media can have on loneliness is most likely also dependent on the type of activity teens do on these social media platforms because social media has to do with interactions with others (Giles & Maltby, 2003). This social interaction can decrease loneliness, when the relationship is perceived valuable (Giles & Maltby, 2003).
However, teenagers are not only interacting with their friends via social media. Many teens use these platforms also to follow and to stay up to date with the lives of celebrities (Stever & Lawson, 2013). This interaction with celebrities on social media can be perceived as a new form of parasocial interaction. Parasocial interaction was originally defined for television as: “a one-sided interpersonal relationship that television viewers establish with media characters” (Rubin & McHugh, 1987).
The perceived realism of the communication that teens experience when they interact with their friends via social media can almost replace the real communication (Pittman & Reich, 2016). Pittman and Reich (2016) therefore conclude that social media can decrease loneliness. However, when interacting with celebrities, this relation works differently. Teens still perceive the communication via social media as real and authentic although it is not. When looking at posts and pictures of celebrities, teens believe that they know the celebrity personally and that the celebrity feels the same amount of intimacy and attachment to them. While for celebrities, social media is just a way of self-promotion and advertising. In that sense it cannot be a real and authentic relationship because both parties have different expectations or goals (Chung & Cho, 2014). It might be that investing time in interaction with celebrities and feeling social support of celebrities online can cause the loss of social interaction in real life (Valkenburg & Peter, 2007b). This displacement of real social interactions in turn may lead to more loneliness in real life. This displacement hypothesis states that online communication has a negative impact on adolescents’ well-being because it reduces the time spend with real friends in the real world, therefore the quality of the friendship decreases and this is harmful for the well being (Valkenburg & Peter, 2007b).
The concepts parasocial relations and the displacement hypothesis are still of importance for adolescents’ perceived relations with celebrities on social media. Moreover, research shows that 75% of young adults report a strong attraction to a celebrity at some point in their lives and that attachment to celebrities increases during adolescence (Giles & Maltby, 2003). Hence, parasocial relationships with celebrities are an important part of teens’ social media culture.
Hence, there is not a consistent conclusion in the literature about the
consequences of social media use, especially when looking at the different activities teens can do on social media. Some teens use social media to interact mainly with friends, some mainly interact with celebrities and others use social media to do both. These differences in online interaction might be differentially related to loneliness. In addition, interaction with friends on social media can increase the offline friendship, while there is no offline friendship between teens and celebrities. Thus, it is
imaginable that spending time on online interaction with celebrities can increase loneliness in real life. Furthermore previous research has mainly investigated the behaviour and consequences of teens on one social media platform only. However teens use multiple platforms simultaneously, these can be intertwined. As mentioned before, the types or relationships teens have on different platforms with celebrities or their friends, can be related to loneliness in a different way.
Furthermore, there is a gap in the literature when it comes to comparing different platforms, activities in relation to loneliness, which the current study tries to fill. This study therefore looks at the relationship between teens’ social media use and loneliness, but also compares the type of activities and the perceived (para)social relationships on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Snapchat is the newest medium and its users are mostly teens (Vuurrood, 2015). Furthermore it is a relatively closed medium, since it only available on smartphones. The features of Snapchat are
different from Instagram and Facebook and these features partially determine the type of communication that teens have. Snapchat creates a form of urgency because
pictures or clips that friends or celebrities upload will disappear after 24 hours. Furthermore via Snapchat you can send pictures that will be deleted seconds after the other person opens them.
Literature review
Since the rise of social media, there has been an on going discussion about whether or not this could be harmful for adolescences. Social media has become a big part of adolescence life. Today’s teenagers have been called ‘generation online’, because they spend on average nine hours per day online (Rushton, 2016). This is nearly all their time awake. Furthermore it is double the amount of time the average American spends looking at their phone (Rushton, 2016). Moreover, it is the first generation that is growing up using social media. Therefore the question rises if social media is harmful or beneficial for adolescence’ well-being. More specifically, the relationship between loneliness and social media use has been studied extensively in previous research. However, the findings are mixed. Whereas some studies found that social media use is related to teenagers experiencing more loneliness, other studies found the contrary, i.e. social media use being related to less loneliness.
Negative link between social media and loneliness
Those studies that found a negative relation between social media use and loneliness (Moody, 2001; Turkle, 2011;Wang, Fink & Cai, 2008) explain this with two main reasons. First the quality of online friendships appears to be lower than face-to-face friendships. When someone has a lot of online friendships this could displace face-to-face friendships. Secondly, Internet use and social media use, in particular, can be a displacement for social activities. When someone spends much time online, there is less time left to spend in real life (Moody, 2001).
Elaborating on this last point, Kim, LaRose and Peng (2009) found that loneliness can be a predictor as well as an effect of social media use. This reciprocal relation states that adolescents who have less social skills and feel lonely in real life will use the Internet to communicate with peers. This results in harming other
significant activities such as work, school and friendships. By doing so, they will be driven towards relying more on social media and the internet to escape from their troubles, which isolates them and increases loneliness even more.
Social media decreases loneliness
There are also several studies that found the opposite effect, namely that social media use can decrease loneliness. For example, Carpenter & Buday, (2007) found that computer-mediated interaction such as online chatting decreases loneliness and depression amongst elderly. Moreover, this seems to be also the case for adolescents. Deters & Mehl (2012) found that posting status updates on Facebook decreased loneliness because adolescents feel more connected to their friends on a daily basis. This effect has been explained with the idea that Internet use and social media use can give users the feeling of social participation and social interaction, which decreases loneliness (Carpenter & Buday, 2007; Shaw & Grant 2002; Song et al., 2014).
Offline and online friendships
The research that looks into social media and loneliness also examines the effect of social media and friendship, as friendship can be related to loneliness. The biggest advantage of social media is that it provides teens with the opportunity to maintain friendships without having to be in the same location (Tufekci, 2010). Furthermore, it can also help to build new friendships. However, is an online
friendship as strong as an offline friendship and can online friendships replace offline friendships? This has been a well-researched topic in communication science. It is important to look at this topic because friendships serve psychological purposes for adolescents such as development of social skills, intimacy and empathy and is
therefore crucial in the developmental stage of adolescence (Desjarlais & Willoughby, (2010). Previous research into this topic often looked at the quantity of online friends
or the frequency of interacting with friends online. However Valkenburg & Peter (2009) point out that it is important to look at the perceived quality of friendships. They state that: “we can feel close to someone whom we hardly know and feel distant to someone we know very well” (Valkenburg & Peter, 2009, p.81).
Quality of friendship and social media
In the literature about the relationship between friendship and social media use, Valkenburg & Peter (2009b) concluded that there is a positive causal relationship between instant messaging and the quality of a friendship. Meaning that adolescents use instant messaging to maintain existing friendships. Valkenburg & Peter (2009a) explain that this positive relation can be explained by the self-disclosure hypothesis. Online self-disclosure is defined as: “online communication about personal topics that are typically not easily disclosed, such as one's feelings, worries, and vulnerabilities” (Valkenburg & Peter, 2009a, p 2.) It is easier to talk about sensitive topics online because someone will be less concerned about how others perceive them since there is no face-to-face connection. Hence, this could mean that adolescents talk about
sensitive topics more easily online and thus the quality of friendship increases by using social media.
Although some existing studies provided evidence that social media or online communication are bad for the quality of friendships (Kraut et al., 1998; Mesch, 2001; Nie & Erbring, 2000), Valkenburg and Peter (2009b) conclude that the great majority of the literature proves that there is a positive effect of internet or social media use on the quantity/quality of friendships (Boase et al., 2006; Boneva et al., 2006; Howard et al., 2001; Hu, Wood, Katz, Rice, & Aspden, 2001; Kraut et al., 2002; Smith, & Westbrook, 2004; Valkenburg & Peter, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c). The
relationship between social media use, quality of friendships and loneliness will be assessed by the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1: The more social media teens use, the better the quality of their friendships is.
Hypothesis 2: Teens that have a higher quality of friendships are less lonely. Hypothesis 3: Quality of friendships mediates the relationship between social media use and loneliness.
Interaction with celebrities on social media
Social media is not only used to interact with friends. Social media have provided celebrities with a platform to interact and connect with their fans (Stever, 2013). At the same time, for fans it is a great way to have an insight into the life of a celebrity and stay up to date. As a celebrity, it is important to have social media because a great amount of followers means more exposure for their brand, which is beneficial for their business (Bond & Drogos, 2014).
It appears that 75% of the young adults reported a strong attraction to a celebrity at some point in their lives (Boon & Lomore, 2001). Teens are more attracted to following celebrities and fandom because they are looking for a role model. In the teenage years the parents stop being a role model and this creates space for media figures to enter (Giles & Maltby, 2004). In the teenage phase, adolescents experience insecurities about their identity and their physical appearance
(Valkenburg & Piotrowski, 2017). Consequently, the insecurity that teens experience, makes it important to belong to a group and to be liked by others. Therefore, teens are experimenting with their self-identity and how to behave towards others. In the past,
TV-shows or characters in books provided teens with possible identities to practise with and to learn from. However, since the rise of social media, teens can find examples of different identities on their smartphone (Boon & Lomore, 2001;
Valkenburg & Piotrowski, 2017). Every activity of every celebrity can be monitored as if the celebrity is a close friend of the teens. Furthermore, the celebrities provide their fans with new content multiple times a day. Hence, it is important to follow every detail of the life of a celebrity since it can be a role model. Logically, teens want to learn as much as possible about social behaviour and relationships so you can apply it in their own lives.
Parasocial interaction
The bond of intimacy that can exist between celebrities and fans is called: “parasocial interaction” (PSI). This is a one-sided interpersonal relationship that is developed because of shared experiences only through viewing a celebrity for a longer period of time (Rubin & McHugh, 1987). PSI is described as: “an illusionary experience, such that consumers interact with personas as if they are present and engaged in a reciprocal direct two-way conversation, feeling as though a mediated other is talking directly to him or her” (Labrecque, 2014, p. 135). In addition, teens get the feeling they know a celebrity as if it is one of their friends because they see so much of them. Research shows that the length of the relationship is not directly related to PSI (Perse & Rubin, 1989). In other words, parasocial interaction could already occur after only one interaction.
In the beginning of the research about parasocial interaction. The phenomenon was seen as a way for lonely people to substitute their social interactions (Cohen, 2004). However, research shows that perceived parasocial interaction has no effect on loneliness or depression (Rubin, Perse & Powell, 1985). Moreover, no evidence was
found that parasocial interaction on TV was related to a lack of social support or increased social isolation (Finn & Gorr, 1988). Cohen (2004) explains that both parasocial and social interaction require social skills. In other words, when someone has less social skills it is also harder to create a parasocial interaction.
Parasocial interaction was originally defined for TV characters in soap operas. In today’s society parasocial interaction can also take place on social media.
Furthermore, it is expected that teens feel closer to celebrities on social media than to TV characters because social media gives an insight in the private lives of celebrities. In addition, the features of social media are designed in a way that updates of friends are mixed with updates of celebrities. It is imaginable that the parasocial interaction will increase because of the private information sharing and the features of social media. Although interaction via social media is in many ways not comparable to real interaction with people, the effect can be the same. Moreover one that is less socially strong and finds it difficult to interact with others in real life can benefit from the physical distance online (McKenna et al., 2002). Often they find it difficult to make friends in real life. However, via social media the strength of a person’s social skills is less important. For example they can write instead of speak and they have more time to think about their messages. On the one hand this means that teens with less social skills can benefit from social media since making friends is easier and thus they will be less lonely (Valkenburg & Jochen, 2007a). However, following the rich get richer theory, teens that have few friends in real life, consequently will have little interaction with peers as well (Kraut et al., 2002). This means that social media for these teens will increase loneliness. However, when parasocial interaction via social media occurs, this can feel as a real friendship. Teens can feel heard and understood by parasocial interaction with celebrities. In addition, it can fulfil motivations of seeking
companionship, passing time and seeking escape (Wang, Flink & Cai, 2008). Therefore it can be expected that teens’ parasocial interaction via social media leads to less loneliness.
Hypothesis 4: There is a positive relationship between interaction with celebrities and parasocial interaction.
Hypothesis 5: There is a negative relationship between parasocial interaction and loneliness.
Hypothesis 6: Parasocial interaction mediates the relationship between interaction with celebrities and loneliness.
Social media landscape is changing
Whether social media makes adolescents lonely or not is dependent on many different factors. First of all, personality and social skills play an important role Desjarlais & Willoughby, (2010). Research has shown that less social skills and social anxiety can mediate the relationship between social media use and loneliness (Wang, Flink & Cai, 2008). Secondly, adolescents today use social media in various ways and across a variety of different platforms. However, previous research has not examined the effects of different platforms and that is why this research wants to fill this gap. Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat are the most popular platforms amongst teens (Vuurrood, 2015). And these three platforms differ enormously in features.
Facebook is the most open platform of the three, meaning that the shared information and photos are visible for friends and often for friends of friends. Within Facebook the app Facebook Messenger is used to have one-on-one
communication. Furthermore, Facebook is used by lots of companies and advertisements are a substantial part of the content that is viewed. In addition, Facebook users can share unlimited text and pictures on their profiles.
Instagram is a very visual platform since it focuses on pictures/videos only. Advertisements are a very small part of the content within this platform. Users have to find people/profiles that they want to follow. Every user has their own profile, which can have different privacy settings. It is visible for everyone that knows your
username or finds you within Instagram. However it is also possible to set your profile to private, which means that only the people that the user gives permission can see the profile. Instagram Stories is a popular part within Instagram. Users can upload photos or short movies that stay in their ‘story’ for 24 hours and only the people that follow you can see this. Hence, it is a more private way of sharing content. Instagram also offers a private chat function that provides one-on-one communication.
Snapchat is the most private social platform of these three, since users must know the username, location or phone number to follow other users. Users have different privacy settings in which they can use who can see their updates. Photos and videos are the only content that can be shared. Similar to Instagram, Snapchat has a ‘story’ function in which you can upload content that is visible for 24 hours only. Furthermore, it is common to share pictures with selected persons only.
As explained before, social media is a big part of teen’s life. It is therefore important to separate the different social media platforms in this study to get a more complete picture of adolescents’ social media behaviour.
In this study I therefore separate the social media platforms and the unique effects that each platform has will be compared in relation to loneliness.
Method Procedure
To answer this research question a cross-sectional survey was used to collect the data. To find participants, the researcher went to a secondary school in The Netherlands to conduct an in-class online survey. The researcher first introduced herself and explained that the survey was part of a graduation thesis within the University of Amsterdam. The teacher emailed the survey-link to all students and after the introduction all students opened their laptop or used their mobile phone to fill out the survey. Prior to this the school had send out an email to all parents, which explained that the students would be participating in a study. All parents were given the opportunity to prohibit their child from participating via an informed consent. After the data was collected the researcher discussed the survey and the research topic with the students.
Sample
A total of 166 respondents filled out the survey. However, 13 of them did not complete the whole survey or did not use any of the social media platforms and were therefore excluded from the sample. This resulted in a sample of 153 students. The average age of the participants was, 15.82, SD = 1.24 with a minimum of 14 and a maximum of 18. Gender was well distributed in this study; 47.7% were female and 52.3% were male. Since the survey was only conducted in HAVO and VWO classes the participants were all highly educated.
Measurements
Social media use. Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat use was measured by asking whether they used it or not. The frequency of the use was measured with a scale of Ross et al., (2009) by asking how long it was used on a daily basis.
Furthermore it was measured how frequent teens do different kind of activities on the different platforms and if these activities were related to friends or celebrities. First the participants were asked whether or not they used Facebook. After that, they were asked to indicate how much time they spend on average on Facebook per day. This seven point-scale started with 1) being not use it every day till 7) more than three hours per day, M = 2.73, SD = 1.72. For Instagram the activity was more frequent, M = 4.04, SD = 1.58 and the frequency of the activity on Snapchat was comparable to Instagram, M = 4.02, SD = 1.62.
Facebook activities. Several questions were asked about the different
activities that teens do on Facebook. All questions asked for estimation on how often teens performed certain activities that fit the social platform. For Facebook it was asked how often they post updates, like updates of others, respond to updates of others, tag other people, use Facebook messenger or play games within Facebook. The respondent had to choose one of the five answer possibilities that were given, namely: 1) ‘always’, 2) ‘often’, 3) ‘sometimes’, 4)‘almost never’, 5)‘never’. To make it easier for interpretation the items were recoded in the opposite way and put into a scale meaning that a higher score on the scale was having a more ‘active’ style of using social media since those teens engaged more frequent in activities and a lower score was interpreted as a passive way of using social media, since those teens engaged in less activities and just used it for scrolling and lurking.
Cronbach’s alpha was, 0.80, M = 3.68, SD = 0.73.
Instagram activities. For Instagram the way of questioning was almost the same. The participants were asked if and how frequently they used Instagram, as mentioned above this was on average 31-60 minutes per day. After that, questions focused on how often they upload photos to their own Instagram accounts, like or tag
or respond to photos of other users, use Instagram for private messaging and watching Instagram stories of others. The responses categories and the recoding happened in the same way as mentioned above. Cronbach’s alpha was, 0.67, M = 2.82, SD = 0.72.
Snapchat activities. If the participants indicated that they used Snapchat, they were asked to give an estimation of the frequency of their daily use. After that the questions about Snapchat focused on the following activities: uploading photos on their own stories, watching stories of others, respond to stories of others and private messaging via Snapchat. The response categories went from 1) ‘Never’ to 5)
‘Always’. Again a scale was created for the 5 Snapchat activity items. Cronbach’s alpha was, 0.70, M = 2.71, SD = 0.77.
Parasocial interaction. Parasocial interaction was measured with a seven-point Likert-scale using the validated items of Labrecque, (2014). These questions were asked for each platform separately. One example of an item was: “When I interact with [Favourite Celebrity], I feel included.” The other items can be found in the appendix. Per platform a scale was created. For all three platforms this scale appeared to be reliable. For Facebook Cronbach’s alpha was, 0.91, M = 0.93, SD = 1.83. For Instagram Cronbach’s alpha was, 0.90, M = 3.02, SD = 2.06 and Snapchat Cronbach’s alpha was, 0.94, M = 1.73, SD = 2.27.
Loneliness. A five-point Likert-scale was used to measure the dependent variable loneliness. The scale to measure loneliness was designed by de Jong Gierveld & van Tilburg (1999). However, for this research the short version of six items was used since this was beneficial for the length and duration of the survey. When conducting a factor analysis it appeared that there were two factors. Logically this could be explained because three items focused on loneliness as a feeling and three items measured loneliness in relation to how many friends the participant had. It was
decided to only use the three items that focused on the feeling of loneliness, since this gave the highest reliability score. These items were: ‘I experience a general sense of emptiness’ ‘I miss having people around me’ and ‘I often feel rejected’. This scale appeared to be somewhat reliable Cronbach’s alpha, = 0.68, M = 3.03, SD = 1.28.
Quality of friendships. Quality of friendships was measured with four items on a seven-point Likert Scale. The items were designed and validated by Valkenburg & Peter (2007b). One example of an item that measured the quality of friendships was: “When my friends know that something is bothering me, they ask me about it.” The other three items can be found in the appendix. This scale appeared to be reliable with Cronbach’s alpha was, = 0.90 M = 4.96, SD = 1.35. All scales and questions were translated in Dutch.
Celebrity interaction. Per platform the yes or no question was asked if teens’ behaviour on that specific platform was used to interact with celebrities. These
questions were added together which resulted in a scale with a range from 0 to 3. This scale was then turned into a dummy variable with 0 for teens who had no celebrity interaction whatsoever and 1 for teens who had celebrity interaction on at least one platform. This resulted in 15,5% of the sample without celebrity interaction and 84,5% with celebrity interaction.
Analysis
To answer the research question several statistical analyses were conducted with help of the program SPSS. To test hypothesis 1,2, 4, and 5 a linear regression analysis was used. This analysis could determine if there is a relationship between frequency of social media use and quality of friendships and loneliness. And to measure a possible relationship between celebrity interaction, parasocial interaction and loneliness. Moreover, the demographic variables gender and age were added to
the multiple regression analysis as well and were taken into account as control variables.
To test hypothesis 3 and 6, and to determine the mediating relationship of quality of friendships on social media use and loneliness, the plugin Process was used in SPSS. This program is designed to directly test moderation or mediation models in SPSS without using several regressions.
Results
Facebook activity. Only 55,4% of the teens in my sample used Facebook. The overall activity scale showed that teens appear to be quite active in engaging in activities on Facebook, M = 3.68, SD = 0.73, where 1 passive engaging and 5 was active engagement. The results indicate that there is not one clear activity that teens do. It is clear that tagging other people is the most popular activity (M = 3.15, SD = 1.20). Since this was the original scale in which 1) ‘always’ and 5) ‘never’. However also liking updates of others (M = 3.25, SD = 1.15) and responding to updates of others (M = 3.54, SD =1) are activities that teens do often as they indicated these activities on average as ‘sometimes’. Less popular activities were using Facebook messenger (M = 3.90, SD = 1.01) and playing games within Facebook (M = 4.40, SD = 1.04). Furthermore sharing updates on Facebook was indicated as an activity that teens on average do ‘almost never’ (M = 3.84, SD = 0.93).
Instagram activity: 90% of my sample used Instagram; their overall engagement in activities was equally distributed. On terms of passive or active engagement they scored, M = 2.83, SD = 0.72, where 1 passive engaging and 5 was active engagement. These teens indicated a higher score for every activity if you compare it to Facebook . The original scale was used in which 1) ‘always’ and 5) ‘never’. Respond, tag or like photos of others (M = 2.26, SD = 0.99) and watching Instagram stories of others (M =
2.42, SD = 1.02) are the activities that teens do most often when on Instagram. Less popular are activities such as using Instagram for private messaging (M = 3.20, SD = 1.11) and uploading photos to their own profiles (M = 3.43, SD = 1.19).
Snapchat activity: 80.1 % used Snapchat. Their overall engagement in terms of passive or active activities can be compared to Instagram, M = 2.71, SD = 0.75, where 1 passive engaging and 5 was active engagement. Again, the old scale was used in which 1) ‘always’ and 5) ‘never’. Teens use Snapchat often to watch stories of others (M=2.10, SD = 1.01) and private messaging (M = 2.23, SD = 1.04). Apparently teens upload photos to their own story (M=3.32, SD= 1.05) and respond to stories of others (M = 3.23, SD = 1.14) only ‘sometimes’.
All correlations between the variables in the current study can be found in table 1. As expected all types of social media use correlate. Furthermore it appears that snapchat use and Quality of friendships have a correlation as well.
Table 1
Correlations Between All Independent and Dependent Variables
Total celebrity interacti on Faceboo k use Instagra m use Snapcha t use Quality of friendship s Total parasocia l interactio n loneliness Total celebrity interaction 1 Facebook use -0.29** 1 Instagram use -0.28** -0.40** 1 Snapchat use -0.25** 0.27* 0.52** 1 Quality of friendships 0.111 -0.08 0.08 -0.19* 1 Total parasocial interaction 0.159 -0.40 -0.36 -0.27 0.25 1 loneliness -0.125 -0.07 0.04 0.08 0.20 -0.02 1 Note. **p < .01. *p < .05.
Social media use, quality of friendships and loneliness
Hypothesis 1 ‘The more social media teens use, the better the quality of their friendships is’ and hypothesis 2 ‘Teens that have a higher quality of friendships are less lonely’ were tested with a multiple regression analysis. All three types of social media use were added as a separate independent variable, as well as quality of friendships. Loneliness was included as a dependent variable. The results can be found in the table below. It appears that there is a significant relationship between quality of friendship and loneliness. Quality of friendship predicts 5% of loneliness. However this prediction is very small as seen in Table 2. All other relationships are
not significant. This means that no proof was found for hypothesis 1. Hypothesis 2 appears to be true.
Table 2
Multiple regression analysis social media use, quality of friendships and loneliness B Std.
error
Beta t Sig. 95% confidence interval Lower Upper Constant Facebook use Instagram use Snapchat use Quality of friendship Gender 1.58 -0.16 0.21 0.27 0.05 0.28 0.81 0.26 0.50 0.35 0.03 0.26 -0.07 0.04 0.08 0.20 0.11 1.95 -0.66 0.41 0.78 1.95 1.07 0.053 0.508 0.681 0.435 0.054 0.288 -0.02 -0.70 -0.79 -0.42 -0.001 -0.24 3.18 0.35 1.20 0.96 0.10 0.80 Note. N=106
Mediation of quality of friendships
Although we found no support for the hypothesis that social media use did influence loneliness, we tested hypothesis 3 with Process within SPSS. In hypothesis 3 we expected the relationship between social media use and loneliness to be
mediated by quality of friendships, meaning that quality of friendship explains the relationship between social media use and loneliness. The results can be found in Table 3 below. It appeared that the model fits the data and that we can use it to
analyse the mediation F(3, 46)=5.21, p <0.01. The effect is not significant b* <0.05, t =0.88, p = 0.38. This means that we cannot reject the null hypothesis and thus we found no proof for hypothesis 3.
Table 3
Mediaton of quality of friendships on the relation between social media use and loneliness
B Std. error t Sig 95% confidence interval Upper Lower Mediation quality
of friendships
-0.0003 0.036 0.88 0.38 -0.041 0.11
Note. N=50
Interaction with celebrities, parasocial interaction and loneliness
Hypothesis 4: ‘There is a positive relationship between interaction with celebrities and parasocial interaction’ and Hypothesis 5: ‘There is a negative relationship between parasocial interaction and loneliness.’ were tested with an additional multiple regression. First a regression analysis was done with interaction with celebrities as independent and parasocial interaction as dependent variable, the results can be found in table 4. After that a new regression analysis was done with parasocial interaction as independent and loneliness as dependent variable, as seen in table 5.
No significant results and thus no relationships were found. Hence we found no proof for hypothesis 4 and 5.
Table 4
Multiple regression analysis celebrity interaction and parasocial interaction B Std.
error
Beta t Sig. 95% confidence interval
Lower
Constant Gender Celebrity interaction 5.94 -0.12 -1.17 0.75 0.29 0.68 0.05 -0.40 7.92 -2.48 -1.73 0.000 0.691 0.501 4.45 -0.69 -0.90 7.44 0.46 -0.10 Note. N=106 Table 5
Multiple regression analysis parasocial interaction and loneliness B Std.
error
Beta t Sig. 95% confidence interval Lower Upper Constant Gender Parasocial interaction 3.13 0.36 -0.09 0.53 0.28 0.12 0.14 -0.08 5.86 1.28 -0.75 0.000 0.204 0.457 2.07 -0.20 -0.33 4.19 0.93 -0.15 Note. N=106
Mediation of parasocial interaction
Although hypothesis 4 and hypothesis 5 were not significant, we tested Hypothesis 6 with the help of Process. It appeared that the model fits the data and that we can use it to analyse the mediation F (1, 104)=111,33, p <0,01. The mediation effect is not significant b=0,52, t =-0,64, p = 0,06.
Discussion
The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between teens’ social media use and loneliness and what the role of celebrity interaction and quality of friendships is in this relation. Previous research showed mixed results in the direct relation between social media use and loneliness. On the one hand social media could increase loneliness (Moody, 2001; Turkle, 2011; Wang, Fink & Cai, 2008), on the
other hand it is possible that social media could decrease loneliness (Carpenter & Buday, 2007; Deters & Mehl,2012; Shaw & Grant 2002; Song et al., 2014). In this study, social media use was not related to loneliness. This supports studies by Ryan & Xenos. (2011) and Kim, Larose & Peng, (2009). These studies both looked at the broader spectrum of factors of psychological well-being and concluded that loneliness could be related to social media use only if other factors such as depression,
neuroticism and shyness were involved. Logically, since the current study measured loneliness only, there were no significant results.
Since loneliness is closely related to quality of friendships it was expected that this concept could explain the relationship between social media use and loneliness. However no proof was found for this mediating relationship. Proof for this mediating relationship was found by Valkenburg & Peter, (2007b). However they looked at adolescent well-being as a whole with loneliness being part of it. The current study does not elaborate on this. Since the current study found no significant results with this mediating model and with the dependent variable loneliness only, this could mean that other factors in the total adolescents’ well-being play a more important role than loneliness. However more research is needed to determine this statement. One could for example look at the mediating relationship of quality of friendships with a broad spectrum of dependent variables loneliness, depression, social skills and/or narcissism to see if there are differences and the determine a broader view on well-being.
In addition, no proof was found for a relationship between social media use and quality of friendship. These findings are in line with a previous studies (Bryant, Sanders-Jackson & Smallwood, 2006; Gross, 2004). The present research thus contributes to the conclusion that social media is not harmful for quality of friendships but is also not particularly beneficial.
There appears to be a small negative relationship between quality of friendships and loneliness meaning that when teens experience higher quality friendships they will be less lonely. This is in line with a study done by Nangle, Erdley, Newman, Mason, and Carpenter (2010). They looked into friendship experiences, loneliness and depression amongst 6th graders children and found that quality of friendships is related to loneliness. Thus similar to the current study they concluded that the higher someone’s quality of friendship is, the less lonely this person will be. From a theoretical perspective we have not enough evidence to conclude that this research is in line with the self-disclosure hypothesis (Valkenburg & Peter, 2007b). It was expected that more social media use would increase quality of friendships and thus decrease loneliness (Valkenburg & Peter, 2007b). The last part of this relation appears to be true. If adolescents experience high friendship quality, this is related to less loneliness. However no proof was found that social media use increased friendship quality.
The second part of this research focused on the relation of teens’ celebrity interaction on social media, parasocial interaction and loneliness. In line with previous research (Boon & Lomore, 2011) the findings of this study showed that teens use social media to interact with celebrities. The previous studies about parasocial interaction found no relationship with loneliness (Rubin, Perse & Powell, 1985) or found that it decreased loneliness (McKenna et al., 2002; Valkenburg & Peter, 2007a). The underlying reason for this decreased loneliness was that even less social teens can experience the feeling of a real friendship via parasocial interaction with a celebrity and will therefore be less lonely. The present study did not find proof for this statement. In addition, the parasocial interaction on the different platforms was not very high. We can carefully conclude that adolescents do not experience
much parasocial interaction on social media. In addition, adolescents use social media primarily to communicate with existing friends.
In the literature about parasocial interaction and loneliness, it was often explained that less social teens could benefit from social media use and/or parasocial interaction. The opposite theory was often stated as well. The rich-get-richer theory suggested that teens that are more social in real life will have higher quality of friendships and thus will be less lonely than teens who have less social skills. This study did not look at the social skills of teens and it is therefore difficult to draw conclusions in relation to this theory. However, it is an interesting suggestion for further research to look into how adolescents’ online social media behaviour and offline social skills, influence the quality of friendships.
For teachers and parents this research is comforting since it shows that teens spend on average approx. 30 minutes to one hour on social media per platform. This is a much lower amount than other research found. In addition, the low levels of parasocial interaction on social media and the missing relationship with loneliness suggest that interaction with celebrities via social media it is not harmful but also not beneficial for teens’ well-being in terms of loneliness. It is possible that this could lead to more social participation since Carpenter & Buday, (2007), Shaw & Grant (2002) and Song et al., (2014) found this result as well.
It is important to mention the limitations of this study. First of all the
participants filled in the survey in class. Although they were not allowed to talk about the questions or their answers, it is possible that teens did not feel private enough and this could have stopped them from answering questions about their levels of
Secondly, the research was carried out with a small sample. This could be the reason that there were almost no significant results. For further research it is therefore suggested to use a bigger sample. Moreover, the level of education differs from the population. All adolescents participating in this study were HAVO or VWO students. In the population this is only 34%. The other 66% have a lower level of education. Consequently this is harmful for the external validity and the results can therefore not be generalized to all teens.
The low reliability score on the loneliness scale indicated that the different items together were not the best way to measure the latent concept loneliness. Hence, for further research it is advised to use more items to measure this concept. Moreover only three types of social media were included in this study. Other types of social media such as Whatsapp or Youtube could have a different impact. It is therefore advised for further research to look into the broader spectrum of social media platforms that adolescents use.
Social interaction, whether it is virtual or in real life will always be important to teens. Adolescents use social media not only for interacting with each other or celebrities but also to stay up-to-date about the world around them. The role of social media in their lives might change, as well as the platforms they use, but social media is here to stay.
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Appendix Survey Questions Facebook:
Do you use Facebook? Yes
No
On average, approximately how many minutes per day do you spend on Facebook? ( Less than once a day
10 or less 10–30 31–60 1–2 h 2–3 h 3+ h
What do you do on Facebook? Sharing posts/updates/photo’s
Liking/commenting/tagging on updates of others Private messaging
Playing games
How often do you share posts/updates/photos on Facebook? Always
Very Often Sometimes Rarely Never
How often do you like posts of others on Facebook? Always
Very Often Sometimes Rarely Never
How often do you comment on posts of others on Facebook? Always
Very Often Sometimes Rarely Never
How often do you tag people in updates of others on Facebook? Always
Very Often Sometimes
Rarely Never
How often do you use Facebook messaging to communicate? Always
Very Often Sometimes Rarely Never
How often do you play games on Facebook? Always Very Often Sometimes Rarely Never Instagram:
Do you use Instagram? Yes
No
On average, approximately how many minutes per day do you spend on Instagram? Less than once a day
10 or less 10–30 31–60 1–2 h 2–3 h 3+ h
What do you do on Instagram?
Sharing/Uploading photos on your own profile or Instagram Stories Liking/commenting/tagging on photos of others
Private messaging/conversations
Watching Instagram Stories of people you follow How often do you upload pictures on your own profile? Always
Very Often Sometimes Rarely Never
How often do you upload pictures or videos on your own Instagram Stories? Always
Very Often Sometimes Rarely
Never
How often do you like, comment or tag people on photos of others? Always
Very Often Sometimes Rarely Never
How often do you use Instagram for private messaging/conversations? Always
Very Often Sometimes Rarely Never
How often do you watch Instagram Stories of people you follow? Always Very Often Sometimes Rarely Never Snapchat
Do you use Snapchat? Yes
No
On average, approximately how many minutes per day do you spend on Snapchat? Less than once a day
10 or less 10–30 31–60 1–2 h 2–3 h 3+ h
What do you do on Snapchat?
Sharing/Uploading photos on your own story watching/commenting on stories of others Private messaging/conversations/photo sharing
How often do you share/upload photos or videos on your own story? Always
Very Often Sometimes Rarely Never
How often do you watch stories of others? Always Very Often Sometimes Rarely Never
How often do you respond to stories of others? Always
Very Often Sometimes Rarely Never
How often do you use Snapchat to have a private conversation or to share photos one on one? Always Very Often Sometimes Rarely Never Celebrity interaction
Do you ever follow or interact with celebrity on Facebook? Yes
No
Do you ever follow or interact with celebrity on Instagram? Yes
No
Do you ever follow or interact with celebrity on Snapchat? Yes
No
Loneliness
The following statements are about general feelings you can have in daily life. Remember that there is no right or wrong.
Please indicate to what extent the following statements apply to you: 1. I experience a general sense of emptiness
Completely disagree neutral agree completely
Disagree agree
2. There are plenty of people I can rely on when I have problems
Disagree agree 3. There are many people I can trust completely
Completely disagree neutral agree completely
Disagree agree
4. I miss having people around
Completely disagree neutral agree completely
Disagree agree
5. There are enough people I feel close to
Completely disagree neutral agree completely
Disagree agree
6. I often feel rejected
Completely disagree neutral agree completely
Disagree agree
Parasocial relationships on Facebook
When answering the following questions, think about your favorite celebrity. This could be a well-known athlete, actress, vlogger, singer or other celebrity, as long as you follow them on FACEBOOK.
It is therefore about what you feel or think when you in one way or another have contact with the celebrity via FACEBOOK.
Try to indicate as well as possible to what extent the following statements apply to you:
[Favourite Celebrity] will talk back to me if I post a message. [Favourite Celebrity] would respond to me quickly and efficiently [Favourite Celebrity] allows me to communicate directly with it [Favourite Celebrity] listens to what I have to say
[Favourite Celebrity] is open in sharing information [Favourite Celebrity] keeps me well informed [Favourite Celebrity] doesn't hold back information
[Favourite Celebrity] makes me feel comfortable, as if I am with a friend When I interact with [Favourite Celebrity], I feel included.
I can relate to [Favourite Celebrity]
I like hearing what [Favourite Celebrity] has to say I care about what happens to [Favourite Celebrity] I hope [Favourite Celebrity] can achieve its goals Every item was measured with a seven-point scale 1 – Strongly disagree
2 – Disagree
3 – Somewhat disagree 4 – Neither agree or disagree 5 – Somewhat agree
6 – Agree
7 – Strongly agree
When answering the following questions, think about your favorite celebrity. This could be a well-known athlete, actress, vlogger, singer or other celebrity, as long as you follow them on INSTAGRAM.
It is therefore about what you feel or think when you in one way or another have contact with the celebrity via INSTAGRAM.
Try to indicate as well as possible to what extent the following statements apply to you:
[Favourite Celebrity] will talk back to me if I post a message. [Favourite Celebrity] would respond to me quickly and efficiently [Favourite Celebrity] allows me to communicate directly with it [Favourite Celebrity] listens to what I have to say
[Favourite Celebrity] is open in sharing information [Favourite Celebrity] keeps me well informed [Favourite Celebrity] doesn't hold back information
[Favourite Celebrity] makes me feel comfortable, as if I am with a friend When I interact with [Favourite Celebrity], I feel included.
I can relate to [Favourite Celebrity]
I like hearing what [Favourite Celebrity] has to say I care about what happens to [Favourite Celebrity] I hope [Favourite Celebrity] can achieve its goals Every item was measured with a seven-point scale 1 – Strongly disagree
2 – Disagree
3 – Somewhat disagree 4 – Neither agree or disagree 5 – Somewhat agree
6 – Agree
7 – Strongly agree
Parasocial relationships on Snapchat
When answering the following questions, think about your favorite celebrity. This could be a well-known athlete, actress, vlogger, singer or other celebrity, as long as you follow them on SNAPCHAT.
It is therefore about what you feel or think when you in one way or another have contact with the celebrity via SNAPCHAT.
Try to indicate as well as possible to what extent the following statements apply to you:
[Favourite Celebrity] will talk back to me if I post a message. [Favourite Celebrity] would respond to me quickly and efficiently [Favourite Celebrity] allows me to communicate directly with it [Favourite Celebrity] listens to what I have to say
[Favourite Celebrity] keeps me well informed [Favourite Celebrity] doesn't hold back information
[Favourite Celebrity] makes me feel comfortable, as if I am with a friend When I interact with [Favourite Celebrity], I feel included.
I can relate to [Favourite Celebrity]
I like hearing what [Favourite Celebrity] has to say I care about what happens to [Favourite Celebrity] I hope [Favourite Celebrity] can achieve its goals Every item was measured with a seven-point scale 1 – Strongly disagree
2 – Disagree
3 – Somewhat disagree 4 – Neither agree or disagree 5 – Somewhat agree
6 – Agree
7 – Strongly agree Quality of friendships
The following statements are about general feelings you can have about friendships in daily life. Remember that there is no right or wrong.
Do you want to indicate to what extent the following statements apply to you lately: 1. When my friends know that something is bothering me, they ask me about it. 2. I tell my friends about my problemsand troubles.
3. My friends help me to understand myself better.
4. When I am angry about something, my friends try to be understanding. Every item was measured with a seven-point scale
1 – Strongly disagree 2 – Disagree
3 – Somewhat disagree 4 – Neither agree or disagree 5 – Somewhat agree
6 – Agree
7 – Strongly agree Age
How old are you? Gender
What is your gender? Male
