The main aim of AWeSome I is to unravel individual differences in the effects of social media use on various aspects of the well-being of Dutch youth. AWeSome’s person-specific paradigm shows how the effects of social media use differ from adolescent to adolescent. A key article of the AWeSome I project has been published in the Journal of Communication.
Project AWeSome's data collection ran from November 2019 to June 2020. During this period, 388 middle adolescents were investigated using different research methods, including online surveys, ESM surveys, digital trace data collection, and Instagram archive downloads.
In the ESM studies, adolescents completed six ESM surveys per day for three weeks, resulting in 126 measurement moments per adolescent. They utilized the Ethica Data App on their smartphones to complete the surveys. We meticulously measured adolescents’ social media activities, such as messaging and scrolling, as well as various outcomes, including self-esteem, loneliness, well-being, task delay, and closeness to their friends.
