On a daily basis, individuals between 12 and 25 years of age engage with their mobile devices for many hours. Social Media Use (SMU) has important implications for the social life of younger individuals in particular. However, measuring SMU and its effects often poses challenges to researchers. In this exploratory study, we focus on some of these challenges, by addressing how plurality in the measurement and age-specific characteristics of SMU can influence its relationship with measures of subjective mental health (MH). We conducted a survey among a nationally representative sample of Dutch adolescents and young adults (N = 3,669). Using these data, we show that measures of SMU show little similarity with each other, and that age-group differences underlie SMU. Similar to the small associations previously shown in social media-effects research, we also find some evidence that greater SMU associates to drops and to increases in MH. Albeit nuanced, associations between SMU and MH were found to be characterized by both linear and quadratic functions. These findings bear implications for the level of association between different measures of SMU and its theorized relationship with other dependent variables of interest in media-effects research.

每天，12 到 25 岁的人都会使用他们的移动设备很多小时。社交媒体使用 (SMU) 尤其对年轻人的社交生活具有重要意义。然而，测量 SMU 及其影响往往给研究人员带来挑战。在这项探索性研究中，我们通过解决 SMU 测量和特定年龄特征的多元化如何影响其与主观心理健康 (MH) 测量的关系来关注其中的一些挑战。我们在具有全国代表性的荷兰青少年和年轻人样本中进行了一项调查 ( N = 3,669）。使用这些数据，我们表明 SMU 的测量结果彼此之间几乎没有相似性，并且年龄组差异是 SMU 的基础。与之前社交媒体效应研究中显示的小关联类似，我们还发现一些证据表明更大的 SMU 与 MH 的下降和增加有关。尽管有细微差别，但发现 SMU 和 MH 之间的关联具有线性和二次函数的特征。这些发现对 SMU 的不同测量之间的关联水平及其与媒体效果研究中其他感兴趣的因变量的理论关系具有影响。