A Study Of The Relationship Between Social Media and Self-Esteem In Various Age Groups

We chose to conduct this study to examine the effects of social media on self-esteem in various age groups. Our study was inspired by the fact that social media is becoming increasingly popular and many studies only focus on the impacts on specifically teenagers and/or youth; we wanted to see the impacts of all ages. We tried to see if social media’s effect on self-esteem would be different depending on age groups. The cool thing about our study is that it is diverse and involves all age groups. This project aims to identify any relationships between social media and self-esteem in various age groups to educate everyone on the effects that social media actually has on self-esteem. Social media is always going to be updating and developing so our study could make the world a better place using more knowledge on this topic. The more knowledge people have about the effects of social media on self-esteem the more we can prevent future damage.

First, we sent out a survey through different social media platforms and got 116 responses. The survey asked about demographics, self-esteem, and social media usage. We then analyzed the data by comparing self-esteem with social media use based on participants own ratings. We also created our own self-esteem score by adding Q1–Q6, dividing by 6, and multiplying by 2, which let us compare our score to participants self-reported self-esteem.

A second survey was then sent out and received 119 responses. This one included demographics, self-esteem, type of social media use (active vs passive), and Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale. We used this data to compare self-esteem between active and passive users, and also to see how our self-esteem score compared with Rosenberg’s scale.

A one-way ANOVA for self-rated self-esteem showed no statistically significant differences between age groups, p = .078. Since the p-value is greater than .05, the null hypothesis could not be rejected, meaning there is no significant difference in self-esteem between age groups based on self-ratings. However, when using the calculated self-esteem score, a one-way ANOVA found a statistically significant difference between age groups, p < .001.

A Tukey HSD post-hoc test showed that the three youngest age groups were significantly different from the oldest group.

Overall, participants tended to rate their self-esteem higher than what was shown in the calculated scores. This difference was larger in younger age groups, while the 56+ group showed the most consistency between the two measures.

t-tests comparing self-reported self-esteem and levels of social media use showed statistically significant differences in all age groups: 13–17 (p < .001), 18–30 (p < .001), 31–43 (p = .009), 44–56 (p = .003), and 56+ (p < .001). This suggests that self-reported self-esteem varied depending on social media use in every age group.

When using the calculated self-esteem scores, most age groups also showed statistically significant differences: 13–17 (p = .003), 31–43 (p = .013), 44–56 (p = .003), and 56+ (p < .001). However, the 18–30 group (p = .077) was not statistically significant. This shows that the results were not completely consistent across all groups.

Paired t-tests comparing the two self-esteem scales showed no statistically significant difference for ages 13–17 (p > .001). However, all other age groups showed statistically significant differences (p < .001), with large effect sizes. This means that for most participants, their self-rated scores were different from the calculated scores using the established Rosenberg Scale. This means every age group, except for 13-17, had a different average self-esteem score when scored used Rosenbergs scale compared to our own.

Due to having no active users in the 56+ group, this group was excluded from the comparison of active versus passive users. In the remaining age groups, no statistically significant differences were found (p > .05). Although the 31–43 group showed the largest effect size, it was not statistically significant. This suggests there may be an effect, but the data from this particular sample could not prove significance. Overall, this means that the type of social media use (active vs. passive) did not have a significant impact on self-esteem in this study.

We discovered that social media does have an effect on self-esteem in most age groups. We found that in both perceived and measured self-esteem, self-esteem was influenced by levels of social media use in every age group except 18–30 (p = 0.77), which was not statistically significant (p > 0.05), meaning there wasn't a measurable effect in this group. Although the data showed a slight trend, it was not strong enough to confirm a significant relationship.

We also found that in most age groups, people tended to rate themselves higher on a 1–10 scale than what was shown in their calculated self-esteem scores. The difference between perceived and measured self-esteem decreased with age, suggesting that self-awareness of self-esteem increases with age. The 56+ group had identical scores on both scales, suggesting the highest self-awareness.

Significant differences were found between our scale and Rosenberg’s self-esteem scale in all age groups except 13–17, suggesting similar results in this group. Since the scales were close in the youngest group but diverged in older groups, this may suggest either that chance is unlikely or that scale reliability varies by demographic, possibly influenced by the rural sample.

Because there were no active users in the 56+ group, it was excluded from active vs passive comparisons. In the remaining groups, no statistically significant differences were found (p > .001), although the 31–43 group showed the largest effect size. This suggests no reliable difference between active and passive users when comparing self-esteem.

If we were to continue this study in future endeavors, we would try to ensure an even sample size across every age group or even make different age groups and see if there would be a major difference in results. We could send out another round of surveying and hopefully get a similar number of respondents, and then compare and contrast the results. Something that we could have improved on was finding another survey technique to account for individuals who are not on social media and would not have seen the survey on their Facebook, instragram, etc.

We want to give a huge thanks to everybody involved in this project! At first, we thought we would only reach 50-100 people, but we ended up reaching 235!

Our project turned out to be the best it could be, and we made great discoveries as young scientists! This is thanks to our Chemistry teacher, Yvonne Dawe! For helping us with this project along the way.

We would also like to thank all 235 of you who completed and shared our project (two surveys); this project would have been impossible without you. And last but not least, our principal and vice principal, as well as Mr. R Dalton at Bayview Academy for sharing our survey on their page/classroom to help with responses.

Also, Dr. D Smith at Memorial University for reviewing our project and helping us decide on ideas to pursue when adding more data.

Social Media’s effect on self-esteem: How does it affect teens? Social Media Victims Law Center. (2025, October 2). https://socialmediavictims.org/mental-health/self-esteem/

Wei, N., Sun, D., & Li, J. (2025, April 24). The impact of active social media use on the mental health of older adults - BMC Psychology. BioMed Central. https://bmcpsychology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40359-025-02642-y

Rosenberg, M (2026, October). Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale https://www.apa.org/obesity-guideline/rosenberg-self-esteem.pdf

Barron, T (2019, May) [Picture of girl and social media platforms] https://medium.com/@taylorbarron3/are-self-esteem-issues-directly-linked-with-social-media-5cd93d5e1c6d