Longitudinal Relations Among Adolescents' Cognitive Control, Social Media Use, Anxiety, and Depressive Symptoms.

Authors

Alva Tang, Carole Leung, Roopa Prasad, Carlos Busso, Stacie L Warren

Published in

The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine. Sep 30, 2026. Epub Sep 30, 2026.

Abstract

Most longitudinal studies lack multi-wave measures and rarely consider cognitive mechanisms, such as cognitive control, that may shape both the development of mental health and social media use. This study examined dynamic within-person relations and stable between-person correlations linking social media browsing (SMB), overall screen time, cognitive control, and depressive and anxiety symptoms across early- to mid-adolescence.
Participants were from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study (N = 9,747, 52.3% female) assessed at baseline, 2-year, and 4-year follow-ups. Primary measures included self-reported SMB and overall screen time, parent-reported depressive and anxiety symptoms, and performance-based cognitive control from the Flanker and Stop Signal tasks. Random intercept cross-lagged panel models estimated within-person time-lagged associations and between-person correlations. Gender was examined as a moderator.
The within-person results revealed a cognitive pathway across genders and screen time types. When adolescents increased SMB (and overall screen time) at baseline, this predicted reduced cognitive control 2 years later (β = -.06, p = .020), which in turn predicted increased depressive symptoms at the 4-year follow-up (β = -.06, p = .010). Additionally, females with more baseline screen time had increased depressive symptoms 2 years later (β = .05, p = .016), which subsequently predicted increased screen time and anxiety symptoms at the 4-year follow-up (βs = .09 to .13, p's < .050).
Reduced cognitive control may be a general mechanism linking adolescent screen use and SMB to later depressive symptoms across genders, whereas changes in affect may be a gender-specific pathway in females.

PMID:
42814079
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 30 Sep 2026.

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