Adolescents’ Social Media Use and Episodic Heavy Drinking During the Transition From Middle to High School: The Moderating Role of Rule Setting and Parenting Styles

Through modelling attitudes and expectations about behaviour, parents can influence the development of problematic externalizing behaviours during adolescence, such as Episodic Heavy Drinking (EHD) and risky Social Media (SoMe) use. Previous research indicates that there is an association between greater SoMe use in adolescence and greater subsequent frequency of EHD. However, little is known about how complex parental factors (such as SoMe rule setting and parenting styles) may influence the relationship between adolescent SoMe use and EHD, and how this relationship develops longitudinally within a Norwegian youth context. Through utilizing three waves of survey data from the quantitative arm of the Monitoring Young Lifestyles (MyLife) study, this thesis examined: 1) the longitudinal nature of the relationship between time adolescents spent on SoMe in middle school and their frequency of EHD in high school, while controlling for important EHD covariates; 2) the main (i.e., promotive) effects of SoMe rule setting dynamics in middle school (i.e., adolescents deciding rules themselves, together with their parents, or their parents solely deciding) on frequency of EHD in high school, and the moderating (i.e., protective) effects of rule setting on the longitudinal relationship between adolescents’ SoMe use and EHD; 3) the main (i.e., promotive) effects of Parenting Style regarding SoMe use (i.e., Negligent (a combination of permissive and rejecting-neglecting), Authoritative, and Authoritarian) on frequency of adolescent EHD in high school, and the moderating (i.e., protective) effects of each of these Parenting Styles on the longitudinal relationship between adolescents’ SoMe use and EHD. The analytical sample at baseline assessment consisted of 654 students (40.2% male, 59.8% female) in their final year of middle school. Estimates from the Poisson regression models provided evidence that greater use of SoMe in middle school was associated with greater frequency of EHD in high school, even after accounting for a range of covariates including EHD in middle school. Furthermore, findings indicated that parents solely deciding SoMe rules (vs. adolescents deciding alone and deciding together with parents) had both a significant promotive (main) and protective (moderating) effect, such that it was associated with a reduction in frequency of EHD in high school even when time spent on SoMe in middle school was at the highest level. Further, adolescents solely decidi