Identifying adolescent social media response in real-time: Risk and protective factors for Asian American mental health

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PROJECT ABSTRACT As of 2022, nearly all (95%) adolescents report using at least one social media (SM) platform daily. Adolescents are prone to engage in social comparison with SM users, which may negatively affect their self-concept (SC). Despite the outsized role of SM on adolescent outcomes, little is known about how SM use impacts SC and ultimately mental health. Furthermore, racial minority adolescents may face additional risks to SC when experiencing indirect or vicarious discrimination experiences, including viewing racial stereotypes on SM. Determining Asian American (AA) adolescent responses to race- based SM content can provide key information on the effects of SM on the psychological adjustment of racial minority youth. AA youth experience the most online bullying compared to other racial/ethnic groups and also reported the largest increase in online victimization and exposure to stereotypic SM content since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. This R21 proposal involving 135 AA adolescents fulfills a gap in the science of how immediate responses to SM content may affect adolescent SC and subsequent mental health. Naturally occurring, popular or “viral ” posts will be presented as experimental stimuli to reflect either stereotypic or counter-stereotypic portrayals of AAs. SC will be assessed immediately through a series of questions to understand how adolescents view themselves, how they compare themselves to others in the post, and whether they or others might perceive their racial group positively or negatively. The long-term objective is to reveal modifiable targets through the direct assessments of psychological processes, specifically how adolescents feel and interpret the messages from social media posts. With implications for cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness- based practices for adolescents, our findings have potential for providing evidence-based anticipatory guidance for parents, clinicians, and communities. Our study has the following aims: Aim 1. To test associations between stereotype and counter stereotype race-related SM content and self-concept (SC) using experimental stimuli, and (b) To investigate how race centrality (whether being Asian American is central to one's identity) moderates the links. Aim 2. To examine the mediation pathways of race-related SM content exposure on mental health and psychological outcomes via SC. Exploratory Aim. To determine how adolescents identify messages in social media content, including the extent they identify racial messaging. The major strengths of this work include the generalizability of findings across SM platforms and enhanced ecological validity through the use of real, viral SM posts, with its selection conducted in collaboration with our youth advisory board of AA teens and other AA consultants. Our approach to assess immediate affective and cognitive response to SM has potential to yield groundbreaking insights on how adolescents learn identity-relevant information online.