Gaming and social media browsing: Evidence of links to wellbeing among girls and boys based on data from PISA 2022

Using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022, this article examines how time spent browsing social media and gaming relates to seven aspects of adolescent wellbeing: school belonging, body image, general wellbeing, feeling of safety, life satisfaction, psychosomatic symptoms, and stress resilience. Descriptive statistics and regression modelling were used to examine these associations. To evaluate their practical significance, we also calculated relative risks and compared the correlation coefficients with those between being bullied and wellbeing. Firstly, we found that psychosomatic symptoms, such as anxiety, sleep difficulties, and headaches, showed a consistently negative association with time spent browsing social media, even after controlling for student background characteristics. The strength of this correlation was equivalent to 63 per cent of that between bullying and psychosomatic symptoms among girls and 48 per cent among boys. Adolescents who browsed for more than three hours daily were about 50 per cent more likely to fall within the top quartile experiencing psychosomatic symptoms compared to same-gender peers who browsed less. Negative associations were observed with time spent gaming, though to a lesser extent. Secondly, browsing social media for more than three hours a day increased the likelihood of scoring in the lowest quartile for body image, wellbeing, and life satisfaction by about 20 per cent for girls, but not for boys. Lastly, while some positive links were found between social media browsing and sense of school belonging, these instances were rare, and their strength was outweighed by the negative associations with other wellbeing aspects. These findings indicate that not all aspects of adolescent wellbeing are equally affected by digital usage with psychosomatic symptoms requiring particular attention, and that the influence of social media on girls’ wellbeing may differ from that on boys.