ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Media Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1561581
This article is part of the Research TopicThe Characteristics and Multiple Factors of Children and Adolescents’ Mental Health in the Internet AgeView all articles
Adolescents' Social Media Posting, Social Support, and the Moderating Role of Tech Attitudes and Self-Esteem: A two-year longitudinal study
Provisionally accepted
- University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, United States
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This study investigates the reciprocal relationship between adolescents' social media posting behaviors and perceived social support over a two-year period. Using a longitudinal design and observational data on posting frequency, we examined whether posting predict perceived social support from close friends and classmates and whether increased social support, in turn, predicts more frequent posting. We also explored the moderating roles of individual differences in selfesteem and attitudes toward technology. Our findings revealed a reciprocal relationship within close friend networks. Our findings revealed a reciprocal relationship within close friend networks. More perceived support from close friends in mid adolescence was linked to more posting in late adolescence, which in turn was associated with more support received from participants' close friend networks in late adolescence. This bidirectional association was not observed within classmate networks. Besides, adolescents from low SES backgrounds and those with lower self-esteem demonstrate significant benefits from social media posting, receiving more social support from close friends, while those with negative attitudes toward technology experienced diminished benefits from posting behaviors in receiving social support. This study sheds insight on the relationship between social networks and social media use by highlighting the ways in which social support relate to adolescents' online behaviors, which further advance our knowledge of how adolescent's preexisting personal traits and posting online interact impact social support that adolescents received.
Keywords: social media posting, social support, self-esteem, Attitudes toward technology, adolescence
Received: 16 Jan 2025; Accepted: 17 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Fan, Bliss, Calvin and Selkie. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Tingting Fan, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, United States
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