Who fits the glass slipper? Adolescent dispositional profiles and their link with instant messaging social support and mental health

Abstract

Although instant messaging (IM) is generally perceived as beneficial for adolescents, the effects seem to be individual-specific. Building on the poor-get-richer and rich-get-richer hypotheses that theorize about whom benefits from IM, we constructed dispositional profiles and compared them in terms of perceived IM social support and mental health correlates. A latent profile analysis (n = 1014) identified four dispositional profiles on the basis of adolescents' big five personality traits, social anxiety level, and social comparison orientation (SCO). Adolescents with average scores (+0.5SD to −0.5SD) on all three indicators (32.90%) were labeled ‘average’ A second group (45.44%) showed average to moderate scores (±0.51SD to ±1SD) with a trend toward low social anxiety, low neuroticism, and low SCO. Hence, this profile was named ‘average-resilient’. Third, highly socially anxious (±1.01SD to ±2SD), moderately neurotic, and moderately introvert adolescents with a moderately high SCO (18.36%) received the label ‘sensitive’. A fourth group (3.31%) included highly extravert, highly emotionally stable adolescents with a low SCO who were not open for new experiences. They were extremely unfriendly (>+2SD or >−2SD), moderately unconscientious, and moderately socially fearless. These individuals were denoted ‘extravert-indifferent’. Average-resilient adolescents experienced less loneliness and depressive symptoms compared to the group with an average profile. Although sensitive individuals perceived more IM informational and instrumental support than the average(−resilient) group, they showed an increased vulnerability to loneliness, depression, and past and prospective nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) compared to the same group(s). While extravert-indifferent adolescents generally reported less IM emotional and instrumental support than the other profiles, they indicated that they were less lonely than average and sensitive individuals. Remarkably, they previously engaged in NSSIs more often than all other groups. Given the mixture of advantageous and disadvantageous effects, we conclude that research on the basis of the poor-get-richer and the rich-get-richer hypothesis overrates the decisive impact of singular characteristics. Instead, the combination of different dispositional traits determines whether or not the individual is capable of achieving beneficial IM effects.