Social media use and youth sports participation: an associational study–empirical analysis based on CGSS data

Background As digital platforms increasingly mediate social interactions, social media has become an important medium for young people to obtain sports information and participate in sports interactions. Method Based on the data from the 2021 China General Social Survey (CGSS), a total of 1,709 young people aged 18 to 35 were screened. An ordered Logit regression model was adopted to examine the association between social media usage intensity and youth sports participation behavior. The moderating effect of health information search behavior was explored through group regression and the significance of interaction terms. Robustness tests were conducted by replacing dependent variables, removing extreme values, and altering the models. Result Social media use intensity is significantly positively associated with youth sports participation frequency (OR = 1.201, p = 0.042). From a peer effect perspective, this association is consistent with the interpretation that social media may make peers' sports participation more visible and socially rewarding, although the peer effect mechanism itself was not directly measured and the cross-sectional design precludes causal inference. The interaction between social media use and health information search was not statistically significant (OR = 0.910, p = 0.570); the hypothesized inverted U-shaped moderation was not supported. Educational attainment and gender are significantly associated with sports participation. Conclusion Social media use intensity is positively associated with youth sports participation. While this finding is theoretically consistent with peer effect theory, the cross-sectional design and the absence of peer-level measures preclude direct empirical testing of peer influence mechanisms. The hypothesized inverted U-shaped moderation of health information search was not supported. Future research should incorporate peer network data and longitudinal designs.