While digital media take a prominent role in sport and everyday life, they may impair young athletes’ mental health through dysfunctional social comparison, impaired sleep, and media addiction. Therefore, it is necessary to provide young athletes with education and skills to deal with these challenges. This study evaluated a brief intervention designed to reduce dysfunctional aspects, while promoting functional media usage. It included 114 athletes (53 males, 61 females) aged 14–21 years ( M = 15.50; SD = 1.96), split into an intervention and control group. Repeated-measures analysis of covariance with the control variable treatment adherence revealed benign envy increased between baseline and follow-up in the intervention group, while depression decreased between baseline and post measurement, and remained lowered after 3 months. Self-efficacy improved in the intervention compared to the control group. Thus, the brief intervention workshop could be a viable and economic tool to improve media usage behavior and depression symptoms in young athletes, particularly in regards to the relation of social comparison and media usage.
Fiedler et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
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