Extending the social cognitive model—Examining the external and personal antecedents of social network sites use among Singaporean adolescents

This research draws upon the extended social cognitive model to examine how external factors such as adolescents’ relationship with their parents, and personal antecedents including depression, loneliness, self-reactive outcome expectation, self-identity, deficient self-regulation, and habit strength, relate to Singaporean adolescents’ time spent on social network sites (SNSs). We used multi-stage cluster sampling to recruit a nationally representative sample of adolescents between 13 and 17 years old (n = 4920) to complete a self-administered survey. Our extended model achieved good psychometric properties and we found support for most of the proposed hypotheses. Most notably, we found a nuanced difference in how paternal and maternal relationships were associated with adolescents’ SNSs use through dependence on SNSs for identity formation—only positive relationship with father has a negative association with adolescents’ dependence on SNSs for identity formation. Dependence on SNSs for identity formation has the strongest association with deficient self-regulation and SNSs habit strength, which are antecedents of adolescents’ time spent on SNSs. Findings suggest that it is important to account for both external and personal antecedent factors of SNSs consumption. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.