Problematic Social Media Use and Lifestyle Behaviors in Adolescents: Cross-Sectional Questionnaire Study

BACKGROUND: The use of social media by adolescents has increased considerably in the past decade. With this increase of social media use in our daily lives, there has been a rapidly expanding awareness of the potential unhealthy lifestyle-related health effects arising from excessive, mal-adaptive or addictive social media use. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to assess the association between adolescents' social media use and health-related behaviours. METHODS: We employed a cross-sectional research approach and analysed data from 96,919 adolescents at high schools throughout the Netherlands. A structured 43-item questionnaire was used to gather data on sociodemographic data, dietary and lifestyle factors and the degree of social media use based on the Compulsive Internet Scale (CIUS). Logistic regression analysis were performed to assess the association between problematic social media use and lifestyle behaviours, while adjusting for sociodemographic factors. RESULTS: From the 96,919 included adolescents, 7.4% (7022) were identified as at-risk for problematic social media users (PSMUs). Furthermore, logistic regression results showed that adolescents who are at-risk for PSMU were more likely to report alcohol consumption and smoking, while simultaneously having significant lower levels of health-promoting behaviour such as healthy eating habits (eating fruits, vegetables and breakfast regularly) and physical activity. CONCLUSIONS: This study confirms that adolescents at-risk of PSMU were more likely to exhibit an unhealthy lifestyle. Being at-risk for PSMU was determinant of soft drugs use, alcohol consumption, smoking, poor eating habits and lower physical activity independent of the additional adjusted covariates including demographic variables and remaining lifestyle variables. Future research is needed to confirm this observation in an experimental setting.