# Intimate self-disclosure and social media use in adolescent girls: Predicting depression from brain and behavior

> **NIH NIH F31** · UNIVERSITY OF OREGON · 2024 · $44,031

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY / ABSTRACT
The rise of social media in the lives of adolescent girls provides unprecedented opportunities to share personal
details with others. While this behavior, known as intimate self-disclosure, can engender greater closeness and
intimacy, it can also result in social rejection and invalidation, which are established risk factors for depression.
This tradeoff is all the more heightened on social media given the potential for any risks associated with one's
self-disclosure to be amplified to a scale that would not otherwise be experienced offline. The proposed project
within this NRSA F31 application will leverage prospective longitudinal data from the NIH-funded Transitions in
Adolescent Girls Study (N=174, baseline ages 10-13 years, 4 timepoints collected at 18-month intervals) and
utilize an innovative and validated neuroimaging task that measures the intrinsic value of self-disclosure to
characterize the neurobehavioral development of intimate (relative to superficial) self-disclosure and its
association with depression in adolescent girls. This project will also examine whether neurobehavioral indices
of intimate self-disclosure moderate the link between social media use and depression, especially in early
adolescent girls. Adolescent girls are experiencing a growing mental health crisis, and there is a critical need to
identify modifiable factors that are conferring increased risk for depression in this population. Intimate self-
disclosure may be a malleable behavior, particularly on social media, that can be targeted through intervention
to reduce the likelihood of experiencing depression in the context of high social media use. The overarching
objective of the proposed project is to advance our knowledge of the development of intimate self-disclosure in
adolescent girls and whether it represents a unique risk factor for depression in girls, especially in the context
of high social media use. The goals of the proposed study are to test 1) how the decision to engage in intimate
and superficial self-disclosure changes across typical adolescent development both at the neural and
behavioral level, 2) whether an atypical developmental trajectory of intimate self-disclosure may confer risk for
depression, and 3) which neurobehavioral indices of self-disclosure in conjunction with high social media use
result in depression in adolescent girls. By identifying modifiable behaviors that confer risk for depression in
the context of social media use, this project will inform future work on early prevention and intervention for
depression in adolescent girls. This fellowship encompasses three critical training goals: 1) develop expertise
in longitudinal modeling for the prediction of adolescent depression, 2) learn advanced methods for processing
and analyzing longitudinal task-based fMRI data, and 3) professional development and impactful science
communication to benefit youth and society. Completion of the research and training ...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10932202
- **Project number:** 5F31MH134567-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF OREGON
- **Principal Investigator:** Elizabeth Ann McNeilly
- **Activity code:** F31 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $44,031
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2023-09-16 → 2025-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10932202

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10932202, Intimate self-disclosure and social media use in adolescent girls: Predicting depression from brain and behavior (5F31MH134567-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10932202. Licensed CC0.

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