Peer-Reviewed Study

Specification Curve Analysis Shows That Social Media Use Is Linked to Poor Mental Health, Especially Among Girls

Jan 2022 🇺🇸 Acta Psychologica PEER-REVIEWED PAYWALLED — LINKED, NOT HOSTED

Published in Acta Psychologica, this study by Jean Twenge, Jonathan Haidt, Jimmy Lozano, and Kevin Cummins reanalyzed three large community survey datasets using specification curve analysis, a method that runs many defensible versions of the same statistical model to test whether a result holds up across different reasonable analytic choices. Where some earlier reanalyses had pooled boys and girls together, this paper separated results by sex and examined social media specifically rather than lumping it in with all screen time. Across the three datasets, the authors found a consistent, moderate association between social-media use and poorer mental health specifically among adolescent girls, describing its size as comparable to or larger than associations reported for other studied risk behaviors. The authors frame the finding as a robust statistical association across modeling choices, not proof of a single cause, and call for further research into underlying mechanisms.

Median betas -0.11 to -0.24 among girls

Across three large community datasets, the association between social-media use and poorer mental health among adolescent girls held at median standardized effect sizes (betas) ranging from -0.11 to -0.24 across specification curve models.

3 large community datasets reanalyzed

The specification-curve method was applied within three separate large-scale community survey samples to test the consistency of the association.

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CITATION

Twenge, Jean M., Jonathan Haidt, Jimmy Lozano, and Kevin M. Cummins. "Specification Curve Analysis Shows That Social Media Use Is Linked to Poor Mental Health, Especially Among Girls." Acta Psychologica 224 (2022): 103512. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2022.103512

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