Adverse Childhood Experiences, Social Media Use and Depression Among Emerging Young Adults

Background: Studies reported that more than 70% of Americans use social media and 49% of youth aged 16 to 25 widely use social media to socialize with others. This is a growing concern regarding problematic Internet and social media use and addiction as up to 44% of US adolescents and young adult users display related problems. Adverse childhood experiences were reported as one of the predictors of problematic Internet and heavy social media use as youth with four or more ACEs were three times more likely to be heavy digital media users than those with one. This study focused on the role of social media use and ACEs on depression among emerging young adults.

Method: This study recruited college students aged 18 to 25 in courses that were randomly selected from the course catalog in a college predominantly White (82.6%) located in the mid-eastern area of the U.S. A total of 365 college students completed an online survey. CDC ACE checklist (10-item, α = 0.8), Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (6-item, α = 0.88), and Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (9-item, α = 0.92) were collected with age at first digital device, gender, and race/ethnicity. Hierarchical regression was conducted. The mean age of the participants was 20.0 years old (sd = 1.6) with 70% of females and 1.4% identified as non-binary. Multi-races, Hispanics, Asians, African Americans, and other races were composed of 2% to 6%, respectively while Whites were the majority.

Results: The average age of having a first electronic device was 11.59 years old (sd = 1.76) although females got it at a younger age than males (t=3.851, df=347, p<.001). 48.6% reported experiencing at least 1 or more ACEs. Results showed that social media addiction and ACEs significantly increased R2 change (R2 change = 0.13, p < 0.001, Adjusted R2 = 0.12; & R2 change = 0.10, p < 0.01, Adjusted R2 = 0.23, respectively). Social media addiction and ACEs were found to increase depression among young adults (b=0.32, p<.001; b=0.31, p<.001 respectively) while being a female and being a White were found to be insignificant.

Conclusion: The study findings revealed that social media addiction and ACEs are predictors of depression. Young adults began to use digital devices at a very young age and spent an average time of 40 hours per week up to 156 hours for the Internet and social media. Age at first device use didn’t affect depression, but social media addiction increases depression. Findings also confirmed the effect of adverse childhood experiences on depression among young adults. Those with 4 or more ACEs were severely addicted to social media compared to those with no or less than 4 ACEs. This suggests that those with higher ACEs heavily use social media which increases depression. As such, the study findings suggest the importance of an intervention of adverse childhood experiences in the effort to prevent social media addiction for adolescents and young adults.