Hourly Associations Between Uplifting, Humorous, and Hateful Social Media Content Exposure and Subjective Well-Being in Two Adolescent Cohorts.

Authors

Kaitlyn Burnell, Angelica F Carranza, Shedrick L Garrett, Mitchell J Prinstein, Eva H Telzer

Published in

Journal of adolescence. Aug 20, 2026. Epub Aug 20, 2026.

Abstract

Adolescent social media experiences are diverse and may vary based on developmental stage. The associations that these experiences have with subjective well-being may also vary in that different associations may emerge when examining relations at the immediate within-person level versus the general person-level.
The current study utilized an ecological momentary assessment design to examine how exposure to three types of social media content (uplifting, humorous, hateful) related to affect and state self-esteem three times per day for 14 days. These associations were examined in a cohort of late adolescents (N = 51; aged 18-20, M = 18.39; 63% women) and early adolescents (N = 67; aged 11-14, M = 12.37; 52% girls). Cohorts were from the same racially and ethnically diverse community in the southeastern U.S., and data collection took place in 2023-2024.
Adolescents reported the greatest exposure to humorous content, followed by uplifting content and finally hateful content. Younger adolescents reported greater exposure to humorous content compared to late adolescents. Within-person, there was a positive hourly association between exposure to uplifting content and state self-esteem, and a negative hourly association between exposure to hateful content and low arousal positive affect. At the person-level, exposure to uplifting social media content was associated with greater positive affect, and exposure to hateful content was associated with greater negative affect. Person-level associations were typically stronger for older adolescents.
Nuance is needed to holistically understand how social media content can differentially relate to subjective well-being.

PMID:
42625431
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 21 Aug 2026.

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