Social Networking Sites: Implications for Youth

In the past few years, social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook and MySpace have become increasingly popular among Internet users. They allow individuals to present themselves, share information, establish or maintain connections, and interact and communicate with other users. As SNSs have become tremendously popular among adolescents and emerging adults, research suggests that online social media use may be connected to young people’s development. This encyclopedia entry summarizes up-to-date research on SNSs, and will focus on the relation between adolescents’ and emerging adults’ use of these sites to address traditional developmental concerns and their psychosocial well-being. Researchers have begun to explore the extent to which individuals engage in self-presentation and exploration as well as relationship formation on SNSs, and are examining the relationship between such use and psychosocial outcomes among youth. As digital youth are growing up in an ever connected world, it is important to understand online social media use and the implications of such use on their psychosocial development and psychological well-being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)