A scoping review of current research on social media use among children and adolescents
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract This scoping review provides an overview of the conduct, origin and distribution of previous peer-reviewed research on children’s and adolescents’ social media use. Searches were conducted in electronic databases Scopus, Web of Science, and ACM Digital Library, identifying 244 studies that met the inclusion criteria. The review reveals a steady increase in publications over the years, with most originating from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. Among these studies, 174 employ quantitative methods, 30 utilize qualitative approaches, 19 use mixed methods, and 21 are review studies. The research predominantly falls within the disciplines of medicine and health, and psychology. The findings highlight a significant imbalance between qualitative and quantitative research, with quantitative, cross-sectional studies relying on self-reported questionnaire results being the most common. However, quantitative studies do not adequately capture the details of the complex and varied nature of social media use, nor do the common cross-sectional nature of those studies enable insights to be drawn on changes and variations over time or establish causal relationships. This scoping review reveals a growing interest in this topic, but also highlights the need for greater geographical and disciplinary diversity, varied methodological approaches, and more heterogeneous participant involvement in future research. This review suggests a pressing need for more empirical, qualitative research that examines situated social media use from the perspectives of children and adolescents. Moreover, additional longitudinal studies are necessary to offer causal explanations and a deeper understanding of the evolving dynamics of social media use among younger populations.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.018 | 0.072 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.025 | 0.023 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".