Social Media Use in the United States and Its Educational Effects on Young Adults: A Longitudinal Study

Abstract

Abstract: This paper uses the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data, particularly its Child Development Supplement (CDS) and Transition into Adulthood Supplement (TAS) data from 2017 and 2019 to form a longitudinal dataset, to study how social media used by young people causally affect their academic achievement, while controlling for their background characteristics and parents’ education and marital status. We estimate our model by using the panel data ordered probit estimation method. Our results show that the infrequent use of social media has no impact on educational outcomes, the daily use of social media has a negative effect on the educational achievement of those pursuing doctoral, medical, and law degrees. It is possible that the time spent on social media could crowd out time that could have been spent with family, friends, or on other activities which promote individual education, health and wellbeing.