Our goal was to identify and explore the relationship between social media usage (operationalized to frequency x quantity of use) and the following variables:

• • Criminal activity

• • Anxiety and depression  

• • Thrill-seeking behavior

• • Sleep disturbances

The social media landscape

The data revealed a wide range of social media habits among these young men:

• • 20% reported never using social media

• • 55% used it in multiple instances daily
  • 10% spent less than 10 minutes per instance
  • 19% spent over 3 hours per instance

Findings

Young men in the study who used social media experienced progressively worse outcomes across multiple areas, including sleep problems, depression symptoms, thrill-seeking behavior, and recidivism.

These connections remained strong even when controlling for participants’ baseline conditions and other influencing factors.

Chicken-or-egg problem

The present study suggests that frequent social media usage is related to depressive symptoms and sleep problems, which indicates that justice involved youth are impacted by social media usage similarly to other youth1. Even more, higher social media use was associated with more sensation seeking behaviors and offending in our sample.

Perhaps the most important remaining question was about cause and effect. As UXers, we don’t often approach questions the same way academics do: what causes compulsive social media use? What causes minors to (re)offend? What do these have to do with each other? 

It’s not enough to look at the data and conclude that increased social media use is related to these adverse effects and move on. From a product perspective, I’d like to consider the mechanisms with which these relationships interact. 

What does this mean for product?

This research confirms patterns seen in other studies: heavy social media use is related to adverse health problems. But it also adds something new—evidence that young people involved in the justice system are affected similarly to their peers.

Looking forward

As UX researchers, we have both the tools and the responsibility to understand these impacts and design accordingly. Because the findings indicated that justice-involved youth are impacted by social media in a similar way to their peers, UXR on these specific user segments may be moot. But I urge us to consider that there is more to inclusivity than meet the eye: it means considering the nuances between user segments, how they overlap (if at all), and their disparate interactions with our product.

If I were to iterate on this study from a UX/product perspective, I’d prioritize the following:

• • What specific features or content types drive compulsive usage patterns, and what does this mean for long-term product use?
  • Are there features that might represent a higher proportion of influence on wellbeing?
  • How does user flow influence the relationship described above?
  • How does time spent influence user patterns, and what might this mean from a product planning perspective?
  • Understanding these mechanisms could be key to helping justice-involved youth—and other important user segments—work toward a more benevolent relationship with our products.