Me, My Self-Presentations and I: Within-Person Associations Between Narcissism, Social Media Use and Peer Attachment

Abstract

Although the relationship between social media and narcissism in adolescents has been widely studied, the direction of this link remains unclear to date. This is striking given the potential deconstructive consequences of narcissism for adolescents’ peer relationships. Therefore, this three-wave panel study (NW1 = 1032) aimed to examine whether increases in adolescents’ narcissism levels are (reciprocally) related to increases in posting positive self-presentations on the one hand, and to decreases in peer attachment on the other hand. Although narcissism was significantly and positively related to both posting positive self-presentations and peer attachment at the between-person level, these findings were not replicated at the within-person level. At the latter level, only the crosslagged relationship of narcissism predicting an adolescent’s tendency to post appearance-related self-presentations on social media was significant. Multiple group tests for sex and receiving positive feedback on one’s self-presentations showed no differences in these within-person associations.