As a 25-year-old kinesiology graduate student at Cal State Fullerton, Matthew Nguyen has effectively grown up with online and social media as part of his DNA.
So, when he began working with CSUF Kinesiology Department professor Matt Hoffmann, examining data from the National Institutes of Health’s massive Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, Nguyen became interested in the layering of interactions between social media, sports participation and mental health.
“As a younger person, I feel social media is such a part of our lives,” Nguyen said. ”Growing up, I have seen both the benefits and the mental health problems it poses.”
Hoffmann began studying data from the ABCD survey when its first dataset was released in 2018. In 2022, after additional data was released, he co-authored a peer-reviewed paper for the Public Library of Science ONE open-access journal on Associations between organized sport participation and mental health difficulties.
In the wake of the release of additional data, Hoffmann and Nguyen have analyzed the latest findings, including the effects of social media, and are submitting a new paper for review and potential publication in scientific journals.
As he looks forward to a career as a certified mental performance consultant and education in the Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology Lab at CSUF, Nguyen says he wants to provide mental health treatment and advocacy in athletics and remove the stigma.
He adds that professional sports leagues are “all investing in mental health (treatment). So there’s a strong future for people like me.”
In recent years, the mental health struggles of high-profile individual sports athletes such as Simone Biles, Naomi Osaka and Michael Phelps have brought global attention to mental health in sports and the pressures elite athletes face and the need to break the myth that athletes are emotionally invincible. Revelations by basketball player Kevin Love indicate mental health treatment also needs to be studied in team sports.
To understand the roots of such struggles, the ongoing, multiyear ABCD study of about 10,000 youths is a valuable vehicle from which to study the phenomena as it tracks how childhood experiences, including sports participation and social media use, shape mental, psychological and social outcomes over time.
The most recent release of information in the survey has provided interesting results by tracking developmental changes over time, so-called longitudinal data, as study participants have aged. Whereas the original study provided data for children of only one age, what Hoffmann called “point in time” data, the newest release tracks the same group of children over time.
As Hoffmann writes in his introduction for the upcoming paper, “The purpose of this study was to investigate longitudinal, bidirectional associations between organized sport participation and mental health difficulties among U.S. children and adolescents.”
For many years, the academic literature has been clear. Participants tend to gain positive mental health results from involvement in sports, particularly team sports.
However, less known is the role mental health plays in steering children and adolescents to sports.
“There are very few studies that look at it that way,” Hoffmann said. ”As far as I know, we’re the first.”
The solution to this particular “chicken or the egg” kind of question intrigued Hoffmann.
As he suspected, and the data bear out, sports participation, particularly in team sports, provides children with positive mental health outcomes. However, the data also show going in, youth with strong mental health are attracted to sports.
Conversely, those with greater mental health difficulties are less likely to participate in organized sports and thus do not benefit from the positive outcomes.
There were also interesting and mixed findings in the role and effects of social media
While consumption of online content “predicted greater mental health difficulties across some syndrome scales,” according to the study, it was also “generally associated with greater odds of sport participation.”
Hoffmann said the newest data also indicate that as youths age, the negative effects of social media may actually trend down. This may be due, in part, to the development of coping mechanisms as children move into adolescence.
Although as the examples of elite athletes show, it can skew the other way as well.
“We found social media provides a double-edged sword,” Nguyen said.
While negative content can lead to anxiety, depression and burnout, particularly in individual sports, social media also “ironically increases the chance of youth participation in sports,” and its positive outcomes.
Based on the potential of positive and negative messaging, Nguyen offers good advice that applies broadly to social media use. Moderation is advisable as is avoidance of negative and divisive content.
“It can be a tool, but it can be addictive,” Nguyen said. “It’s a very nuanced situation.”