Objectively Measured Social Media Usage and School Prepardness

Research findings suggest that time spent on social media is related to school success in a way that students who spend more time on social media have lower school grades. However, these findings are inconsistent. The main reason for this inconsistency might be various methodologies that researchers have used to measure social media usage. What most of these methodologies have in common is that participants need to estimate the average amount of time they spend on social media. Ecological Momentary Assessment, i.e., a research method that allows measuring behavior and affect in real-time and in a natural environment, eliminates the subjectiveness of this estimation. Moreover, mobile apps used for conducting an Ecological Momentary Assessment also allow passive data collection, i.e., capturing app-time usage from participants’ smartphones, and thus eliminate participants’ estimation. Therefore, the main aim of our study is to examine if social media usage covaries with the students’ perceived preparedness for schoolwork during eight days.

This intensive longitudinal study started in March 2022 and will last until the end of June 2022. At least 100 first-grade high-school students from Zagreb, Osijek, Varaždin, Rijeka, and Split will participate in this study. The EARS smartphone app was used to conduct an eight-day longitudinal study, with participants reporting on how prepared they felt for their schoolwork once every day. EARS app also collected passive data on social media app-time usage. We will use multilevel statistical modeling for data analysis. Based on the previous research, we expect that more frequent social media usage will be related to less perceived preparedness for schoolwork. These findings will have both theoretical and methodological contributions. While being one of the first studies using passive collection data for assessing the frequency of social media usage, the results will help to better understand school preparedness

Lucija Šutić
Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences at University of Zagreb
Croatia

Lucija Šutić is a Ph.D. student in the postgraduate doctoral study of Prevention Science at the Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Zagreb and is currently employed on the project Testing the 5C framework of positive youth development: traditional and digital mobile assessment. She has received her Master’s degree in Psychology from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb and was awarded the Rector’s award for scientific work as a student. Her former scientific interest was focused on romantic relationships in adolescence and early adulthood, as well as on the stigmatization of mental disorders. Currently, her research focus is on methodological aspects of intensive longitudinal studies and digital mobile assessments.

Miranda Novak
Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences at University of Zagreb
Croatia

Miranda Novak, Ph.D., is an assistant professor working in the group of scientists gathered around the Laboratory for Prevention Research, Department of Behavioral Disorders, Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Zagreb. Her main research interest is youth mental health promotion, mental health policy, prevention of internalized disorders, evidence-based program implementation, and usage of modern technology in mental health promotion. From 2021, she is leading an installation research study on the 5C approach to positive youth development funded by Croatian Science Foundation. Moreover, she coordinates a digital youth platform Pukotine.hr supported by UNICEF Office Croatia and other partners. She was a Fulbright Research Fellow at the University of Oregon, USA, in 2019

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