Article

he relationship between social media use and life satisfaction changes across adolescentdevelopment. Our analyses of two UK datasets comprising 84,011 participants (10–80 yearsold) find that the cross-sectional relationship between self-reported estimates of social mediause and life satisfaction ratings is most negative in younger adolescents. Furthermore, sexdifferences in this relationship are only present during this time. Longitudinal analyses of17,409 participants (10–21 years old) suggest distinct developmental windows of sensitivityto social media in adolescence, when higher estimated social media use predicts a decreasein life satisfaction ratings one year later (and vice-versa: lower estimated social media usepredicts an increase in life satisfaction ratings). These windows occur at different ages formales (14–15 and 19 years old) and females (11–13 and 19 years old). Decreases in lifesatisfaction ratings also predicted subsequent increases in estimated social media use,however, these were not associated with age or sex.

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