Associations between parental support, social media addiction, and depressive symptoms among early adolescents in Guam

TL;DR

This study explores how parental support, social media addiction, and depression are linked among early adolescents in Guam, finding that these relationships are not bidirectional and are consistent across ethnic groups.

Contribution

The study provides new insights into the relationships between parental support, social media addiction, and depression in early adolescents in the U.S.-Affiliated Pacific Islands.

Findings

Parental support was negatively linked to later social media addiction but not to depressive symptoms.

Social media addiction was associated with increased depressive symptoms, but not vice versa.

The observed relationships were consistent across different ethnic groups in Guam.

Abstract

Limited research has examined the potential associations between parental support, social media addiction, and depression among early adolescents in the U.S.-Affiliated Pacific Islands (USAPI). The purpose of the present study is two-fold. First, we examine the relationships between parental support, social media addiction, and depressive symptoms among adolescents in Guam, a USAPI in the Western Pacific. Second, we explore whether the potential relationships between the three above-mentioned variables for Guam adolescents would differ based on ethnicity. We analyzed data from two waves of a survey of middle school students in Guam. Total sample size for Wave 1 of the survey was n = 538; total sample size for the Wave 2 survey was n = 507. Results of a cross-lagged panel design showed that Wave 1 parental support was negatively associated with Wave 2 social media addiction, however, the association between Wave 1 parental support and Wave 2 depressive symptoms was not statistically significant. Also, although Wave 1 social media addiction was positively associated with Wave 2 depressive symptoms, Wave 1 depressive symptoms did not associate with Wave 2 social media addiction. The results thus indicated the association between social media addiction and depressive symptoms is not bi-directional for Guam youths. Furthermore, the results from a multi-group path analysis showed that the above results remained consistent across ethnic groups. These findings have implications for the development of interventions aimed at mitigating social media addiction and depression among Guam youths and USAPI youths more broadly.

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