The use of social media as a two-way mirror for narcissistic adolescents from Austria, Belgium, South-Korea, and Spain

Lluís Mas Manchón; David Badajoz Dávila

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0272868

. 2022 Aug 31;17(8):e0272868. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0272868

The use of social media as a two-way mirror for narcissistic adolescents from Austria, Belgium, South-Korea, and Spain

Lluís Mas Manchón ^1,^*,^#, David Badajoz Dávila ^2,^#

Editor: Rashid Mehmood³

PMCID: PMC9432699 PMID: 36044422

Abstract

The use of social networking sites (SNS or social media) often comes with strong self-centered behaviors to promote self-appearance. The relationship between narcissism and social media use has intensively occupied scholars in the last decade, yet not much research has focused on, first, how the intensity of social media use (SNS use) is associated with narcissism through a self-centered appearance focused use of these SNS; and second, whether these associations are moderated or not by cultural differences of the country of origin in such a critical age of personality formation and (global) culturalization as the transition from pre-adolescence to adolescence. We performed a correlation and mediation analysis on a cross-sectional survey among Austrian, Belgian, Spanish, and South Korean adolescents (n = 1,983; M_age 14.41, 50.3% boys) examining the adolescents’ daily usage of social media, their self-centered appearance focused behavior, and the reported narcissism. Findings show that a self-centered appearance focused use of SNS (SCA) moderates the association between SNS use and narcissism, especially for males from the three European countries. We have also particularly found that the years of use, number of friends and time spent in FB are associated with narcissism. Since SCA is defined in the study as narcissistic behavior in SNS, we argue that social media are part of the socialization process as both reinforcers and catalyzers of narcissism.

Introduction

The use of social networking sites (SNS) by children and adolescents has increased steadily in the last decade. A study in 2016 by BBC found that more than 75% of children in the UK between 10 and 12 had social media accounts [1]. More recently, the Pew Research Center reported in 2018 that 95% of teens in the US (from 13 to 17) had access to smartphones, 72% were using Instagram, 69% Snapchat, 51% Facebook, and 45% admitted being online almost constantly [2]. Although there is a great renewal and variability in the specific platforms used by each generation -in 2021, TikTok or Twitch are the fastest growing platforms amongst adolescents, most platforms are based on taking and sharing images and videos with a broad range of formats, technical manipulations and uses. In general, these platforms permit great visibility, social feedback, close control over the image, and easy accessibility by the users [3, 4].

The use of SNS often comes with strong body surveillance and body exhibition practices, which can be associated with several body image and personality risks [5]. Narcissism is a prevalent personality disorder amongst youngsters associated with the own’s body promotion and attention-seeking [6]. The relationship between narcissism and the use of social media has intensively occupied scholars in the field during the last decade. Two meta-analytic reviews have stablished a strong and consistent association between narcissism and social media use, particularly self-centered behavior such as posting selfies or status updates, but also quantitative factors such as time spent on social media or number of friends [7, 8].

However, some works cast doubt on the direct relationship between social media use (SNS use) and narcissism [9]. Narcissism is conceptualized as a multifactorial personality trait that develops along life due to psychosocial and cultural factors [10, 11]. Yet not much research has focused on how factors such as the type of social media use, culture or gender can moderate narcissism. Since personality is molded by an interplay of crucial cultural and social factors such as education, the nation, or the media [12], this research tries to shed light on how social media behavior is associated with narcissism, and to what extent national culture and gender moderate theses associations during adolescence as a crucial period of personality formation [13, 14]. Importantly, narcissism’s subcomponents exhibitionism, exploitativeness and entitlement are particularly prevalent in early ages [15]. While the western-oriented pervasiveness of SNS add to the traditional globalization dynamics as homogenizing factors towards global culture [16] and the way citizens use SNS, local and national cultures can explain important differences of social behavior and personality such as is the case of the relationship between individualist versus collectivist cultures and high versus low narcissism [17–19].

Therefore, the objective of this research is to explore how the intensity of SNS use is associated with narcissism through a self-centered appearance focused use of SNS; and second, whether these associations are moderated or not by cultural differences and gender during preadolescence and the early years of adolescence.

The relationship between social media use and narcissism

Intensity and self-appearance as narcissism indicators of social media use

Narcissism was conceptualized in 1988 as ‘a grandiose sense of self-importance or uniqueness; a preoccupation with (…) power, beauty, or ideal love; exhibitionism; (…) interpersonal exploitativeness, relationships that alternate between extremes of overidealization and devaluation; and a lack of empathy’ [20]. Narcissism has usually been defined in three dimensions (leadership/authority; entitlement/exploitativeness and grandiose exhibitionism [21, 22]. Vazire [23] posed that narcissists are more likely to behave in an exhibitionistic way, seek attention from others and focus on physical appearance. More specifically, narcissism personality trait is associated with showing the body socially, control and constantly change appearance and use strategies to promote oneself and attract other’s views, approval, or appreciation [3, 24–26]. Those that to some extent behave with great exhibitionism cannot stand being ignored and need to promote themselves and gain interest and attention from the others [24, 27].

Narcissism is a personality trait that develops in early childhood and adolescence, that is when cultural impacts are more powerful. Adolescents are defined as children and young adults of ages between 10 and 19 who are still developing their identity, and therefore, are exposed to cultural changes [28]. For adolescents there is a special “risk of adolescent cultural identity confusion” as well as “internalizing and externalizing pathological behaviors” [16].

Social networking sites (SNS) are online platforms in which users continuously generate and share images and text with known and unknown peers. Facebook (FB henceforth) is one of the first and is certainly the most popular SNS worldwide with 1.8 billion daily users and 2.8 billion monthly users [29], but there are many others attracting the interest of youngsters around the world such as Instagram, Tik Tok, Pinterest, Periscope, or Twitch, to name a few. All of those are image-based tools to share content with friends and contacts. Some are even used as personal photo albums accessible to a great number of friends and contacts. Thus, social relationships are partially, and in some cases exclusively, mediated by the images shown of ourselves. As observed at the dawn of FB, this tool was being used by adolescents to build a hedonistic image based mostly on a visual identity of their ‘hoped-for possible’ [30]. Seminal work by Buffardi and Campbell [31] showed SNS as a potentially suitable arena for narcissistic self-regulation as these tools allow a close self-control of the information provided, especially images, and a large network of superficial relationships. Walters and Horton [32] conducted a study on the direction of the effects of FB use over personality, narcissism and, specifically, grandiose exhibitionism. In sum, both the nature of SNS and the mechanisms to use SNS align well with narcissism behavior, thus using social media and narcissism feed into each other.

Yet, the relationship between social media use (SNS use) and narcissism remains unclear [33]. To guide this discussion, scholars have focused on the type of social media use such as an agentic versus a communal use of social media [5, 32, 34, 35]. An agentic use of SNS is based on the adolescents’ concern on the importance of attractiveness in SNS; and manifests in behaviors such as constantly taking and publishing selfies, updating status, changing profile picture, using techniques to look better in pictures, removing a tag from a picture in which one considers not to be attractive enough, comparing systematically pictures with others, or follow-up one’s pictures comments [36]. A communal use of SNS would focus on actions towards others such as liking others’ posts, private messaging, birthday wishes or reading friends’ posts and making comments [35]. However, research on how the intensity of social media use relate to narcissism is far from conclusive:

H1: A higher social networks use will be related positively with narcissism.

Following the rationale of this hypothesis, the explanatory mechanism for social media to be inextricably connected with narcissism is the social media determinism towards a self-centered image-based use, which aligns well with the reinforcing effects spirals model [37]. In other words, the more anyone uses social media in general, the more likely his/her behavior will be agentic and focused on the image, thus an increasing use of social media inevitably leads to an increasing self-centered appearance focused use:

H2: A higher social media use will be related with higher self-centered appearance focused use of social media.

Further, we draw on the well-reported connection between self-centered appearance focused social media use and narcissism [38]. Two dimensions of a self-focused type of SNS use may interact with narcissism. First, high levels of narcissism are related with the tendency to apply attractiveness and appearance as the main criteria to post pictures [20, 23, 26, 31, 39–43]. Particularly, studies have found a correlation between narcissism (self-sufficiency, vanity, leadership, admiration demand or grandiose exhibitionism) and the frequency of posting selfies based on attractiveness [40, 44–46] or valuing pictures for their physical attractiveness [24, 26]. Siibak [47] found that the profile picture is used by youngsters between 11 and 18 to construct their ideal attractive self or the ought-self, and that girls tended to prioritize their aesthetic, emotional and self-reflecting dimensions in these images.

Second, narcissists are constantly using SNS to compare this physical appearance with their peers. Narcissists apply self-regulatory strategies to affirm an unrealistic positive self-concept [48] and have no interest in strong interpersonal relationships [5]. Toma and Hancock [49] found that self-affirmation is the most important outcome of using FB. And Seidman’s study on undergraduates [50] found out that self-presentation behaviors in FB (self-promotion and the tendency to show ideals in particular) were predicted by low conscientiousness and high neuroticism. Carpenter [24] and Mehdizadeh [26] found that grandiose exhibitionism predicted self-promoting behaviors such as accepting strangers as friends and constantly updating the status, profile picture, and pictures in general. And Ong et al. [5] found that narcissism is a predictor of self-generated content in 11–16-year-old adolescents.

Thus, we posit that these two dimensions of a self-centered appearance focused use of SNS–how attractive is physical appearance and self-regulatory mechanisms based on a systematic comparison with peers- are both indicators and reinforcers of a narcissistic personality:

H3: Self-centered appearance focused use of social media correlates positively with narcissism.

The relevance of country and gender on a narcissistic use of social media

As a personality trait, narcissism stems from culture [10]. Culture is conceived as a sum of environmental factors such as language, tradition, values, artifacts, or media messages [12]. Many of these factors overlap across cultures, which is why countries cannot be fully equated with cultures. ‘Globalization’ is commonly defined as the worldwide spread of people, goods and ideas across borders and countries [51–53]. Globalization exposes humans to multiple new cultures and the outcomes can be perceived as positive (increased creativity, less prejudice) or as negative (culture loss, ethnic bias, or identity crisis) [54]. Globalization reached a new dimension with the outburst of technological networks and social media because a great portion of humanity can individually and virtually communicate freely and in real time with any one from anywhere.

Hermans and Dimaggio [55] suggested a connection between globalization and the “identity disturbances” observed since the 1980s. According to Albrow [56] globalization may even alter the “place in social structure and culture” of different age groups in the same culture, particularly young segments of society [16, 55]. Thus, age has traditionally been conceived as a homogenizing factor across cultures. McCrae et al. [57] found consistent personality similarities between people of the same age span from Germany, Italy, Portugal, Croatia, and South Korea, and consistent differences between youngsters and middle adulthood participants from these countries–the former being more open and extraverts and the latter being more agreeable and conscious.

Yet, countries or group of countries have been taken and still are taken as solid cultural divisions [18, 58]. Culture studies have a long tradition in classifying countries as more individualistic or more collectivistic [19] among other dimensions [58]. Individualists place greater interest in oneself and their independence, whereas collectivists are concerned about the interests of the group (family, organization, society…). As Grijalva and Newman’s study [17] suggest, collectivist cultures weaken behaviors against the group, and McCrae and Terracciano [18] found that individualistic cultures (namely American and Europeans) scored higher in personality trait extraversion than collectivist cultures (Africans and Asians). Coherently, high individualist nations score higher in the enhancement of individual traits whereas low individualist nations score higher in enhancement of communal traits [59].

A consistent thread of studies has reported the existence of both a cross-cultural narcissism as well as some country-based narcissism traits, lately giving more importance to individual narcissism [60], but there are very few accounts of cross-cultural similarities or differences in narcissism as related with the social media activity and usage. In general, studies have found no such significant and theoretically relevant differences in multiple comparisons of western and eastern countries [45]. In addition, the individualist-collectivist division does not successfully explain some minor cross-cultural differences in the social media usage. For instance, the study by Errasti et al. [61] showed that Thai adolescents scored higher in emotional disclosure and expression in social media than Spanish adolescents. This finding would oppose to the expected higher online emotional expression of participants from the country with higher individualism -Spain- to fill the comparatively lower offline social and emotional bounds. Besides, in this study, Spanish adolescents scored higher in leadership than Thai counterparts, but no clear differential Facebook usage was found.

Further, the intersection between gender studies and culture studies has usually evidenced overlapping or contradictory stereotypes [62]. Gender differences occur across countries despite gender egalitarian policies [62]. For instance, in Costa et al.’s study [63] women scored higher in “Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Warmth, and Openness to Feelings, whereas men were higher in Assertiveness and Openness to Ideas” (p. 322), especially in western (individualistic) cultures such as the US and Europe. Further, studies have reported that men score higher in narcissism (especially Exploitative/Entitlement and Leadership/Authority, and to a lesser extent GE) than women [15, 64].

Again, not much research has found consistent gender differences between social media usage and narcissism. Arpaci et al. [12] found that the correlation between narcissism and selfie posting behavior was significant for men only, while females were using social media more intensively. Errasti et al. [61] reported a higher FB use by females from Spain and Thailand, but no particular connection between this social media use and narcissism behavior. Their study did find that Spanish males score higher in social media behavior indicating exhibitionism than females, and the opposite in the case of the Thailand sample. In line with this, Kim and Jang [65] found a correlation between social media use frequency and narcissism for males but not for females; and, importantly, the motivation for self-presentation in SNS correlate with narcissism for both men and women.

Overall, there is no conclusive research analyzing country and gender differences in how social media use relates with narcissism, hence we pose the research question:

RQ: What are the country and gender variations in the relationship between social media use (SNS use) and narcissism (H1), SNS use and self-centered appearance focused use (SCA) of SNS (H2), and SCA and narcissism (H3)?

Narcissism and the extended use of Facebook

Previous hypotheses are grounded on the reinforcing cumulative effects of social media use and narcissistic personality in different countries. If the two ends -SNS use and narcissism- feed into each other, then an increasing use of social media is related with being narcissistic (H1) and with a narcissistic use of social media (H2), which in turn relates with narcissism (H3) [66]. According to this spiral form, a moderate or decreasing use of social media would be associated with a moderate or decreasing narcissistic behavior. Simply put, social media are conceived as narcissistic tools, hence higher levels of activity in social media would to some extent be equated with higher levels of self-centered appearance-based behavior and narcissism, and the opposite for lower levels of activity.

Being the first global SNS, Facebook can be an insightful case of study for this model. First, most studies on social media include Facebook, hence most of the evidence provided applies specifically to this platform. Second, although the use of FB by adolescents has decreased in some countries, it is still widely used in every country by all generations including adolescents. So, authors have found positive experimental correlations between the time spent in SNS and narcissism [7, 26, 35, 44]. Here we add the distinction between the reported active versus passive use of Facebook [43, 67] as connected with narcissism:

H4: An active (vs passive) Facebook use correlates positively with narcissism.

Further, interestingly, social media can substitute or even hinder social life. Authors have found a negative correlation between time spent in FB and the percentage of friends that users knew in person [35]. Indeed, there are cognitive constraints that limit the active relationships humans can hold -an average of 150, Dunbar’s number, thus the number of friends in social media is expected to correlate negatively with the number of friends offline [68]. Having more friends in Facebook may be associated with more online activity and more time spent in Facebook, less social life or offline socialization, and perhaps more narcissism [35, 39]:

H5: The number of Facebook friends is positively related with narcissism.

A final hypothesis may show a preliminary connection between a long-term use of social media and narcissism. Being one of the oldest social media, Facebook is one of the few SNS that brings the opportunity to focus on the years of use as a variable:

H6: The number of years of Facebook use correlates with narcissism.

To add clarity to the theoretical stand of the article, the entire model of hypothesis is shown graphically in Fig 1.

Methods

Materials, participants, and procedure

A cross-sectional study was conducted between February and May 2017 in Austria, Belgium, Spain, and South Korea, called the Intercultural Study Project (ISP). The country to collect data is a variable to control country variations in the relationships posed in the hypothesis. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Vienna (Austria) and the Social and Societal Ethics Committee (SMEC) of the University of Leuven (Belgium). Convenience sampling was used to recruit schools. Selection was based on a list of schools that was constructed by the researchers or was provided by the government in some of the countries. Schools were contacted through e-mail and/or by telephone until a substantial number of schools agreed to participate in order to guarantee a minimum of 300 participants in each. Early and middle adolescents (12 to 16 years old) were targeted in each country. Respectively seven, thirteen, five and four schools in Austria, Belgium, Spain, and South Korea agreed to participate.

We had previously sent to the school a written document in which parents had to give consent. This document was filled with the name of the participant and the name of one of the parents and manually signed by this parent. These documents were collected before the start of the data collection to make sure that no participant with no written parent consent would fill the questionnaire. Before participating in the study, adolescents were also asked to give active consent and were informed about the study goals.

Researchers visited the participating schools in each country with paper-and-pencil questionnaires and ensured anonymity and confidentiality during participation in the study. Depending on the customary habits of rewarding adolescent participants in each country, adolescents received an individual reward card (South Korea, 4$) or were entered in a lottery to win a reward card (i.e., Austria, Belgium, and Spain).

A total of 1,983 adolescents participated in our study. More precisely, 368 Austrian (18.6%), 675 Belgian (34%), 564 Spanish (28.4%) and 376 South Korean (19%) adolescents participated. The mean age was 14.41 years (SD = 1.08), and 50.3% were boys. Adolescents mostly reported to have higher educated families as the majority of the sample (76.9%) reported that their mother and/or father had a higher educational degree. A MANOVA analysis revealed significant country differences regarding age, gender, and educational level of the parents, V = .372, F(9, 4602) = 72.29, p < .001, ηp² = .124. Follow-up analyses indicated differences occurred for gender, F(3, 1534) = 4.25, p < .01, educational level, F(3, 1534) = 17.30, p < .001, and age F(3, 1534) = 260.07, p < .001. adolescents from lower educated families participated in Austria (M = 3.70, SD = 0.90) as compared to Belgium (M = 4.06, SD = 1.06), Spain (M = 4.18, SD = 0.94), and South Korea (M = 4.17, SD = 0.91). Lastly, Belgian adolescents (M = 13.74, SD = 0.65) appeared to be younger than Austrian (M = 15.15, SD = 1.25), Spanish (M = 15.09, SD = 0.85), and South Korean (M = 14.03, SD = 0.82) adolescents.

Measures

The questionnaire was originally designed in English. A backward translation- method was used to translate the questionnaire in all countries except for Spain. In Spain, two researchers translated the questionnaire through a two-step procedure. In a first step, each of the researchers translated half of the questionnaire. In a second step, they reviewed the translated questionnaire in order to further standardize terms. Special attention was also given in each country to align the wording of the scales to adolescents’ daily living environment.

Socio-demographic correlates

Country (1 = Austria, 2 = Belgium, 3 = Spain, 4 = South Korea), gender (1 = boy, 2 = girl), educational degree of the mother and the father (1 = no degree, 2 = elementary school degree, 3 = high school, 4 = professional bachelor, 5 = academic degree), and age (birth year, recoded into age in years, M = 14.41, SD = 1.08) were requested.

Social media use (SNS use)

Respondents indicated how often they used social media in general on a daily basis using a 7-point Likert scale ranging from “Never use it” to “More than 3 hours.”

Facebook and Instagram use

Participants reported how much time they spent per day on Facebook or Instagram on a scale ranging from 1 (= never use it to less than 10 minutes) to 7 (= more than 6 hours). Respondents also answered questions about their active and passive Facebook/Instagram activities using a 5-point Likert scale ranging from “Never” to “Always” [69] to thirteen items. Eight items questioned respondents’ involvement in active Facebook activities, such as “post comments on Facebook” and “update Facebook status.” A principal components analysis indicated these items loaded on one factor (eigenvalue = 5.912, explained variance = 73.93%, alpha = .95). The items were averaged into one variable (M = 1.92, SD = 1.02). Five items asked about respondents’ involvement in passive Facebook activities, such as “read comments on Facebook” and “check news feeds.” A principal components analysis indicated these items loaded on one factor (eigenvalue = 3.79, explained variance = 75.80%, alpha = .92). The items were averaged into one variable (M = 2.08, SD = 1.15).

Self-representation (Self-centered appearance presentation, SCA)

This concept operationalizes the self-centered appearance focused behavior with two self-reported scales. First, respondents used a 5-point Likert scale (1, “almost never”, 2, “rarely”, 3, “sometimes”, 4, “often”, 5, “almost always”) on statements about appearance in SNS (attractiveness): “you take a selfie and post it on social networking sites”, “you use techniques to make you look better in pictures you post in social networking sites (cropping parts of yourself, using filters, using Photoshop or editing software)”,”you select the most attractive pictures of yourself to post on social media”, “you remove a tag identifying you on a photograph posted by another user”, and the open question “Could you explain why you usually remove it?”) [32, 40, 70]. Second, the Physical Appearance Comparison Scale [71] is employed to measure self-representation in Facebook and Instagram. This scale presents a 5-point Likert scale (1, “never”, 2, “seldom”, 3, “sometimes”, 4, “often”, 5, “always”), on the following statements: “When using Facebook/Instagram, I compare my physical appearance to the physical appearance of other”, “The best way for a person to know if they are overweight or underweight is to compare their figure to the figure of others on Facebook/Instagram”, “When using Facebook/Instagram, I compare how I am dressed to how other people are dressed”, “Comparing how you look to how others on Facebook/Instagram look is a bad way to determine if you are attractive or unattractive”, and “When using Facebook/Instagram, I sometimes compare my figure to the figures of other people”.

Narcissism

Narcissism is measured using the Narcissistic Personality Questionnaire for Children-Revised (NPQC-R) [4] and the NPI-13 scale of narcissism [22]. The NPQC-R is a 12-item Likert scale ranges from 1 “Not at all like you” to 5 “Completely like you”, and respondents had to assess the narcissistic indicators “I always know what I am doing”, “I am going to be a great person”, “I was born a good leader”, “I am really a special person”, “I think my body looks good”, “I think I am a great person”, “If I ruled the world it would be a better place”, “I am good at getting people to do things my way”, “It is easy for me to control other people”, “I would do almost anything if you dared me”, “I have the capacity to persuade people in believing anything I want them to”, and “When I am supposed to be punished, I can usually talk my way out of it”. The NPI-13 scale consists of 13-items with two dichotomous statements as choices each. These statements inquire about attitude and behavior regarding authority, respect, power over others, showing off or body appreciation. Those are a few examples: “I find it easy to manipulate people” vs “I don’t like it when I find myself manipulating people”, “When people compliment me I get embarrassed” vs “I know that I am a good person because everybody keeps telling me so”, “I like having authority over other people” vs “I don’t mind following orders”, and so on.

Results

The dataset used to extract results is deposited in the public repository http://Osf.io (URL: https://osf.io/f2vwg/?view_only=acfafa0d822542dba30a40d4f007c075). Before we dive into the test of hypothesis, we provide some preliminary descriptive statistics. The overall mean (M) for NPQC-R was 3.05 (Standard Deviation, henceforth SD = .728) (of which 911 above the mean and 946 below) and the NPI-13 mean was 3.70 (SD = 2.403). Social media use (SNS use) mean was 2.75 (SD = 1.085), self-centered appearance focused use of social media (SCA) was 1.94 (SD = .835) and active Facebook use (the average of the 13 items measure Facebook and Instagram active use) was 1.95 (SD = 1.041). Years of Facebook use averaged 3.25 years (SD = 1.585) and the most reported Facebook friends span was 101–200 friends (span 3), although the mean was higher (202–300 friends; SD = 2.319) (see Table 1; The abbreviations in this table mean the following: NPQC-R: Narcissistic personality questionnaire for Children-Revised Likert 12 items; NPI- 13: Narcissistic Index; SNS Use: Social Networks Use -hours spent; SCA: self-centered appearance focused use of social media; Active FB use: Active Facebook use; FB Years: years of Facebook use; FB Friends: number of friends in Facebook or Instagram).

Table 1. Preliminary descriptive statistics.

Variables	Mean	Mode	SD
NPQC-R	3.05	3	0.728
NPI-13	3.70	3	2.403
SNS use	2.75	2.71	1.085
SCA	1.94	1	0.835
Active FB use	1.95	1	1.041
FB years	3.25	3	1.585
FB friends		3	2.319

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Measurement invariance for the NPI-13 and NPQC-R scale was examined with a correlation test. Both variables, NPQC-R and NPI-13 correlate (r (1686) = .505, p < .001) so it can be assumed that they measured narcissism in a similar way. Nevertheless, we report the two separately to add clarity to findings. Since NPQC-R offered more consistent results (and because it is based on Likert scales), it was used for splitting high vs low narcissism in participants (using the Mean as a high/low threshold as informed next).

In response to H1 (H1: A higher social networks use will be related positively with narcissism), social media use (SNS use) correlated positively with narcissism in both NPQC-R (r(1716) = 0.0744, p = .002) and NPI-13 (r (1654) = 0.203, p < .001), meaning that a higher usage of social networks is related with higher narcissism, in all four countries, and for males and females. The gender distribution was part of the research question, so this partially contributes to respond to it (RQ: What are the country and gender variations in the relationship between social media use (SNS use) and narcissism (H1), SNS use and self-centered appearance focused use (SCA) of SNS (H2), and SCA and narcissism (H3)?).

So, within this research question, males reported lower overall SNS use (M = 2.66, 1.07) than females (M = 2.84, SD = 1.1), and the correlation between SNS use and narcissism was higher for males than for females (males NPQC-R r (841) = .0251, p < .001; NPI-13 r (803) = 0.2, p < .001; females NPQC-R r (865) = .159, p < .001; NPI-13 r (839) = .0399, p < .001). As can be seen in Table 2, male adolescents scoring high in narcissism had a mean of 2.75 in social media use (SNS use) whereas those scoring low in narcissism had a mean of 2.55; while in the case of female adolescents, the difference of SNS use between those scoring high and those scoring low in narcissism is smaller (2.89 and 2.79 respectively). Narcissism is calculated here as a dichotomic variable between those that are over the mean average (>3.05) (high narcissism) and those that are under the mean average (>3.05) (low narcissism) in the NPQC-R index.

Table 2. Social media use (SNS use) by narcissism and gender.

Narcissism	Gender	SNS use
High	Male	2.75
	Female	2.89
Low	Male	2.55
	Female	2.79

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The threshold to divide segments between high and low narcissism is the mean average of this variable, that is, higher or lower than 3.05 (as also reported in Fig 2).

Narcissism was more significant (p < .001) than gender (p = .002) when comparing the correlation between social media use (SNS use) and narcissism (using the threshold for NPQC-R M ≥ 3.05, since NPI-13 showed no significant differences by gender). As can be seen in Fig 2, although SNS use for females was higher, males showed a stronger association between high SNS use and high narcissism (t (1716) = 2.41, p = .016).

Still within the scope of H1 and RQ (relationship between social media use and narcissism), we now turn to see how this relationship can be moderated by country of origin. All countries except South Korea’s NPI-13’ scale of narcissism reported significant correlations between narcissism and social media use (SNS use) (all p-values <.005). Spanish teenagers show the strongest correlation between social media use and both variables of narcissism (NPQC-R, r (493) = .159, p < .001; NPI-13, r (462) = .2, p < .001) and, among the significant correlations, they reported the highest values of social media use (SNS use) (3.07) (Table 3). Austria and Belgium show correlation between SNS use and narcissism and a similar social media use (2.72 and 2.71) (NPQC-R, r (570) = .0947, p = .023; NPI-13, r (566) = .224, p< .001 for Belgium; and NPQC-R, r (287) = .114, p < .053; NPI-13, r (261) = .214, p < .001 for the Austrians) while South Korea had a lower social media use (2.41) and no significant correlation between SNS use and narcissism (NPQC-R).

Table 3. Social media use (SNS use) and narcissism (NPQC-R and NPI-13)^*.

Country	SNS use	NPQC-R	NPI-13
Austria ^*	2.72	3.04	4
Belgium ^*	2.71	2.82	3.11
South Korea	2.41	3.40	3.93
Spain ^*	3.07	3.07	4.13

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* Correlation between SNS use and Narcissism (NPQC-R or NPI-13) p < 0.05, except NPQC-R South Korea.

Furthermore, we narrow the focus by comparing the differences between countries, narcissism, gender, and social media use (SNS use) (all correlation p-values under .05, except South Korea). Since the high versus low narcissism is calculated using the NPQC-R index to add consistency and rigor, and South Korean adolescents showed no correlation between SNS use and NPQC-R, the ANOVA model does not consider this country (Table 4).

Table 4. Social media use (SNS use) by country, gender, and level of narcissism.

Country	Gender	Narcissism	SNS use
Austria^**	Male	High	2.83
		Low	2.63
	Female	High	2.68
		Low	2.65
Belgium^**	Male	High	2.82
		Low	2.52
	Female	High	2.75
		Low	2.76
Spain^**	Male	High	3.12
		Low	2.75
	Female	High	3.31
		Low	3.04

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** ANOVA overall model p<.001 (all countries)

Now, data from Austrian and Belgian male adolescents clearly show the reported correlation between SNS use and narcissism, Spanish adolescents showing the highest correlation for both female and male adolescents. As seen graphically in Fig 3 and numerically in Table 4, Spanish males and females are the ones that more clearly show a connection between using social media more intensively (3.12 and 3.31 respectively in the scale) and reporting higher levels of narcissism. Similarly, Austrian and Belgian males show the same pattern with almost the same values of social media use (2.83 and 2.82), whereas females reporting high narcissism in these two countries score 2.68 and 2.75 of social media use respectively.

Next, in response to H2 (H2: A higher social media use will be related with higher self-centered appearance focused use of social media), there is a positive correlation (Fig 4) between SNS use and self-centered appearance focused use of social media (SCA) (r (1702) = .411, p < .001), meaning that someone makes use social media, the more prone he or she is to focus on one self’s appearance.

Further, the SCA variable (self-centered appearance focused use of social media) is explored here as a high-low condition too (the threshold being M = 1.94), showing that a high social media use entails a high SCA use (M = 3.13, SD = 1.075 versus M = 2.4, SD = 0.059). Differences were confirmed with a t-test (t (1702) = 14.8, p < .001).

H2 is also confirmed for males and females separately (RQ) (females: r (845) = .401, p<.001; males: r(848) = .402, p < .001), both groups showing similar results (p = .407). In both, more social media use (SNS use) was related with more SCA. Males (M = 2.66, SD = 1.168) used social media more intensively than females (M = 2.84, SD = 1.223) but reported a less self-centered use (SCA) (males, M = 1.72, SD = 0.721; females, M = 2.17, SD = 0.775) (Table 5).

Table 5. Self-centered appearance focused use of social media (SCA) and social media (SNS use) use by gender.

	Gender	Mean	SD
SNS Use	Male^**	2.66	1.067
	Female^**	2.84	1.099
SCA	Male^**	1.72	0.756
	Female^**	2.17	0.848

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** Correlation between SCA and SNS p<.001 per gender

Analyzing the self-centered appearance focused use of social media (SCA) as a high versus low variable, we can visually see the similarities between a high versus low self-centered appearance focused use of social media (SCA) by males (M = 3.11, SD = 1.039 and 2.37, SD = 0.954) and females (M = 3.14, SD = 1.101 and 2.43, SD = 0.97) (see Fig 5).

In addition, no country differences were found, hence all countries show positive correlations between SNS use and SCA (all p-values under 0.05). Spanish adolescents reported the higher SNS use, but medium SCA (1.98); then, Austrian adolescents reported a 2.72 of SNS use and a 2.24 of SCA; Belgian adolescents a 2.71 and 191 respectively, and South Korean adolescents 2.41 and 1.70 (see Table 6).

Table 6. Social media use (SNS use) and self-centered appearance focused use of social media (SCA) for each country.

Country	SNS use	SCA
Austria^*	2.72	2.24
Belgium^*	2.71	1.91
South-Korea^*	2.41	1.70
Spain^*	3.07	1.98

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* Correlation between SCA and SNS p<.05

When splitting SCA into high versus low categories (all p-values under 0.001), we observed a positive correlation for each country (Fig 6 and Table 7), stronger for Belgium (3.11 of social media use for those with high SCA as opposed to 2.31 of social media use for those with low SCA) and South-Korea (3.35 and 2.75 respectively) if compared with Austria (2.96 and 2.34) and Spain (2.91 and 2.17).

Table 7. Social media use (SNS use) by country, and level of narcissism.

Country^**	SCA^**	SNS use
Austria^**	High	2.96
	Low	2.34
Belgium^**	High	3.11
	Low	2.31
South-Korea^**	High	3.35
	Low	2.75
Spain^**	High	2.91
	Low	2.17

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** Correlation between SCA and SNS use p<.001 per country

In response to H3 (H3: Self-centered appearance focused use of social media correlates positively with narcissism), a positive and significant correlation was found between the self-centered appearance focused use of social media (SCA) and NPQC-R (r (1728) = 0.094, p<.001), and NPI-13 (r(1669) = 0.263, p<.001). Dichotomizing narcissism as a high-low measure (NPQC-R threshold M = 3.05) further reinforces the positive relation with SCA (t(1728) = 3.30, p = .001; High M = 2.01, Low M = 1.88).

Gender was a significant variable on narcissism NPQC-R index, but not significant for NPI-13 (NPQC-R t(1847) = 0.094, p<.001, NPI-13 t(1755) = 1.86, p = .0.63). The ANOVA tests were significant for high and low narcissism and for gender on SCA (all tests p<.001). No interactive effects were found.

As observed, regardless of a higher social media use by females in general, the correlation of SNS use and SCA is very similar for males and females (an increase from 2.08 of social media use for females with low SCA to 2.28 for females with high SCA; whereas males’ social media use increases from 1.63 to 1.79) (see Table 8 and Fig 7).

Table 8. Self-centered appearance focused use of social media (SCA) as associated with levels of narcissism and gender.

Gender	SCA	SNS use
Males^*	High	1.79
	Low	1.63
Females^*	High	2.28
	Low	2.08

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** Overall model test Gender*SCA on SNS use p<.001

The correlation between narcissism and SCA was positive and significant for all countries too (all p-values below 0.05). Overall, Austria reported the highest levels of SCA (M = 2 and 2.63) and South Korea the lowest (M = 1.38 and 2.21) for males and females reporting high narcissism. The cases of Belgium and Spain were similar since narcissist males and females scored 1.91 and 2.14 respectively in the case of Belgium, and 1.95 and 2.22 in the case of Spain (Table 9 and Fig 8).

Table 9. Self-centered appearance focused use of social media (SCA) by countries, gender, and low/high narcissism.

Country	Gender	Narcissism	SCA	SD
Austria	Male	High	2.00	1.004
		Low	1.86	0.749
	Females	High	2.63	0.886
		Low	2.33	0.910
Belgium	Male	High	1.91	0.769
		Low	1.71	0.678
	Females	High	2.14	0.790
		Low	2.02	0.769
South Korea	Male	High	1.38	0.701
		Low	1.16	0.430
	Females	High	2.21	0.943
		Low	1.96	0.873
Spain	Male	High	1.95	0.724
		Low	1.60	0.607
	Females	High	2.22	0.878
		Low	2.07	0.671

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** Overall model Country*Gender*Narcissism on SCA p<.001

We turn now to hypothesis 4, 5 and 6 (H4, H5, and H6), which provide with insightful data on Facebook (FB) use and narcissism. H4 is confirmed since an active use of FB correlates with narcissism in both indexes: NPI-13 (r (1646) = .0908, p < .001) and with NPQC-R index (r (1719) = .768, p = .001). And the same for H5 since the number of FB friends also correlates with narcissism in both indexes: NPI-13 (r (1017) = .164, p < .001) and NPQC-R (r (1037) = .148, p<.001); and for H6: the number of years in FB correlates with narcissism in both indexes, mainly NPI-13 (r (1005) = 1.113, p < .001), and, to a lesser extent, NPQC-R (r (1020) = .0964, p = .002).

Finally, mediation analysis was performed to assess the mediating role of the self-centered appearance focused use of social media (SCA) between social media use (SNS use) and narcissism (Bootstrap = 1000 in both indexes). For NPQC-R, both the total effect (β = .0468, z = 2.5, p = .013) and the indirect effect (β = .0179, z = 2.22, p = .027) were significant, but the direct effect was not (β = .0289, z = 1.45, p = .148). For NPI-13, mediation of NCA was confirmed, results revealed a positive total effect (β = .458, z = 7.92, p < .001), indirect effect (β = .191, z = 6.82, p < .001) and direct effect accounting SCA (β = .267, z = 4.47, p < .001). Indirect effect of SCA explained 41.6% of the mediation for NPI-13 and 38.2% of the moderation for NPQC-R (see Fig 9).

In sum, although all independent correlations had been confirmed (H1, H2 and H3), SCA mediation on NPQC-R was not conclusive. NPI-13 showed more consistently a mediation of SCA on the SNS and the narcissism link, while NPQC-R showed that direct effect including SCA was not significant (see Fig 10).

Discussion

The correlation between social media use (SNS use) and narcissism is positive for all countries and for males and females. When making a high/low distribution of narcissism, there were no correlation for South Korean males and very weak correlation for females. Mainly, the three European countries [11] are in line with previous findings on, first, the fact that female adolescents use social media more intensively regardless of reporting low or high narcissism, and second, male adolescents show a greater association between a high usage of social media and narcissism [65]. This is particularly clear for Spanish males as opposed to the case of South Korean adolescents. An analogous cultural difference had been found previously between Spanish adolescents and Thai adolescents [61].

The second finding is the relevant association between social media use and a self-centered appearance focused usage of social media (SCA). For both males and females from the four countries, the more adolescents use social media, the more likely these adolescents will make a self-centered appearance focused use of them. Being the case that the SCA (self-centered appearance focused use of social media) can be conceived as a narcissistic type of SNS usage, the confirmation of this hypothesis adds relevance to the connection between using social media and narcissism (H1) and the further connection between SCA and narcissism (H3). Again, a SCA use of social media is connected with narcissism, but the connection is greater for Austrian females and weaker for South Korean males and Belgian females.

In addition, SCA has showed to be a moderating factor of the link between social networks use (SNS) and narcissism (especially on the NPI-13 index). According to this regression analysis it seems plausible that the increased use of social media increases narcissistic personality traits, or else, that narcissistic profile is more prone to have a SCA use of SNS. Moreover, a self-interested use of social networks, increases with both narcissism and self-centered use. In this line of thought, this study also presents more specific data connecting the use of FB, the number of friends and the years of use of this social media platform with both measures of narcissism. These correlations are demonstrative on the factual connection between these specific phenomena and the reported narcissism, especially the extended use of Facebook throughout the years.

Furtherly, although the correlation between social media use, the self-centered appearance focused use of social media (SCA) and narcissism was not significantly different for females and males, we should remark that females reported higher levels of social media use and SCA than males, but lower levels of narcissism and, in fact, females show weaker correlation in the three hypothesis -which can be clearly seen in the low versus high division of narcissism. This aligns with Errasti et al.’s study [61] for the Spanish sample in the case of Facebook. Consistently, males score higher in narcissism [15, 17] and show a stronger correlation in the hypotheses 1, 2 and 3.

Thus, the self-centered appearance focused use of social media (SCA) emerges here as a relevant mechanism to furtherly pose directionality in the connections of social media use (SNS use), SCA and narcissism. SNS may be used in a non-narcissistic way and thus have no direct relationship with narcissism [9], but in the light of our findings, SNS can also be used in a narcissistic way, presumably by narcissists, so that using SNS is connected with a SCA type of use and, ultimately, narcissism, regardless of gender and country of origin. In sum, in line with Buffardi and Campbell’s study [31] and Slater’s general theory on the reinforcing spirals effect (2007), social media can permit a narcissistic self-regulation. This would explain previous contradictory findings on the directionality of effects between social media usage and narcissism [32, 33], being the case that some of those previous studies were not supported by a strong media theory [39].

The contribution of the study is thus on the media theorization for this phenomenon. As put by Slater, `the cognitive or behavioral outcomes of media use also influence media use, particularly when the cognitions or behaviors are related to personal or social identity’ [37: 283]. This approach has been incorporated to our topic of interest here in the form of specific self-centered behaviors in social media as mere displayers of narcissism but also as implicit catalyzers -reinforcers following Slater- of narcissism [9] on the basis of, again, correlations between the two ends: narcissism and social media use.

In sum, the prevalence of narcissism as a personality trait triggered by a variety of socialization inputs, many of which are mediated, is shown here with a cross-cultural study on a large and homogenous sample of adolescents [72].

Conclusions

The study presented here consisted in a survey conducted physically in four different countries with a cross culturally and gender balanced sample of 1,983 adolescents from 12 to 16. The objective was to explore how the intensity of social media use (SNS use) is associated with narcissism through a self-centered appearance focused use of SNS; and to control country and gender variations. We posed a model of correlations that resulted in a mediation model, showing that a self-centered appearance focused use of social media (SCA) moderates the association between SNS use and narcissism. Since SCA is defined in the study as narcissistic behavior in SNS, we draw on the reinforcing spirals theory [37] to posit the integration of SNS in the socialization process, which commonly leads to a narcissistic personality and narcissistic behavior both online and offline.

The approach brought by this study is not without limitations. Clearly, a more accurate statistical model such as the structural equation modelling on the role of variables, and a more filtered and homogenous sample, could provide evidence and exact power effect to the causality of specific narcissistic behaviors in SNS -e.g., exhibitionism- on personality formation. Besides, ethnographic techniques should also be part of the equation. This line of research needs to make progress due to the increasing range of social media tools and the increasing relevance and availability of those at all levels -personal, social, and professional, with several implications for intimate relationships, leisure, sports, or family, to name just a few.

Supporting information

S1 Data. Dataset Intercultural Study Project (ISP).

(XLSX)

Click here for additional data file.^{(611.6KB, xlsx)}

Data Availability

All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting information files.

Funding Statement

The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.

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PLoS One. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0272868.r001

Decision Letter 0

Rashid Mehmood

27 Apr 2022

PONE-D-21-34574The use of social media as a two-way mirror for narcissistic adolescents from Austria, Belgium, South-Korea, and SpainPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Mas Manchón,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

**********

2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

**********

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

**********

4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

**********

5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This study concerned studying and understanding whether social networking sites - Facebook and Instagram- contribute to narcissistic behaviour . Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine how intensities of SNS use are associated with narcissism through a self-centered appearance-focused SNS use, in addition to exploring whether cultural differences and gender play a role during preadolescence and early adolescence. The study involves a physical survey conducted in four different countries: Austria, Belgium, Spain, and South Korea with a cross-cultural and gender-balanced sample of 1,983 adolescents aged 12-16. Their methods to collect the data follow step by step approach, that starts from getting the agreement of the parents and then meeting the students to inform them about the study goals. Next, fill out the questionnaires physically. According to the authors, self-centered appearance-focused use of SNS (SCA) moderates the association between SNS use and narcissism. Based on their definition of SCA as narcissistic behaviour in social networks, they proposed the reinforcing spiral theory to explain the integration of SNS in the development of narcissistic behaviour, both online and offline. The paper is well written and follows a standard rational development, methodology, and analysis. The authors need to improve the presentation and discussion of the results.

Reviewer #2: The authors in this paper investigate how the intensity of SNS use is associated with narcissism through a self-centered appearance focused use of these SNS; and whether these associations are moderated or not by cultural differences of the country of origin in such a critical age of personality formation and (global) culturalization as the transition from pre-adolescence to adolescence. A correlation and mediation analysis were performed on cross-sectional survey among 1983 adolescents from Austria, South-Korea, Belgium, and Spain. They found that a self-centered appearance focused use of SNS (SCA) moderates the association between SNS use and narcissism, especially for males from the three European countries. It was also found that the years of use, number of friends and time spent in FB are associated with narcissism.

Comments:

- The authors should further explain the tables (e.g., what the columns represent, explain abbreviations, what does High and Low mean, what is threshold,

- The results are not properly explained. Some variables are not explained e.g. RQ, M. How they are obtained, what they represent. equations need to be provided

- Some values are presented in the text but are not provided in the table

- With respect to the Result.

o Further interpretation is needed.

o SD is not clear

o Line 378, what are r, p, and how they are obtained?

o Line 388, what is RQ?

o Line 389, what is M?

o Line 399, “(t (1716) = 2.41, p = .016).” are these numbers presented in a table??

o Table 1,

� Not properly explained

� It was not mentioned in the text.

� What does first column represent? What is FB years?

� Where are the values for Mode Column?

� What is N column?

o In table 2,

� why value of country is High and Low? What does it mean? On what basis they are considered Low and High??What is the threshold.

� 2nd column should be Gender (Mistake)

o Line 404, All countries except South Korea reported positive correlations for H1 (all p-values <.005 except South Korea’s NPQC-R) ? is this shown in the table?

o Line 406, “Spanish teenagers reported the highest values of SNS use (Table 3), highest narcissism levels.” It is not the highest narcissism levels because South Korea is higher.

o Table 3,

� in its caption, they mentioned NPI-13 but is it not in the table

� How p-values are obtained?

o Line 415.” all p-values under .05, except South Korea)” please explain.

o Line 445, “Table 6. Social media use (SNS use) and self-appearance focused behavior use of SNS”, in other table captions SNS is mentioned without the complete phrase. Consistency is required.

- Please explain Table 4

- Figures quality is not good.

- Figure 1 is not mentioned in the text.

- Fig 2, what is x-axis, what is y-axis?

- Figure 4, give full form of SCA should be added.

- For Figure 2,3, and 5, the threshold should be shown in the Figures.

**********

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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PLoS One. 2022 Aug 31;17(8):e0272868. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0272868.r002

Author response to Decision Letter 0

18 May 2022

We thank the reviewers for their relevant and useful comments. Reviewer #2 is addressed individually, with the reviewer’s comments followed by our answers.

Reviewer 2

The authors should further explain the tables (e.g., what the columns represent, explain abbreviations, what does High and Low mean, what is threshold,

As explained next in each comment, some tables had wrong information or were not clear. Following the changes proposed by the reviewers, we have edited the tables, explained them in the text and have deleted two of the tables (7 and 10) so that the Results sections is much clearer now. We have provided the figures as editable PDFs files so that the quality is high.

The results are not properly explained. Some variables are not explained e.g. RQ, M. How they are obtained, what they represent. equations need to be provided

RQ is the Research Question (we deleted this mention on the Results because it could be misleading). M’s are means or averages calculated for each variable. We have reviewed the text in order to further specify to what variables refer each M value. In some cases, we have added the specific equation (correlation, student-t or ANOVA) that was used, just before the result in APA format, for clarification. As mentioned, Results have now a clearer structure and the reference to the tables information is more explicit so that they are much easier to follow.

Some values are presented in the text but are not provided in the table

NPI-13 was mentioned in the text but it was not in table 3. It has been added. We have also found that the mode was not informed in table 1, so it has also been added too. We have reviewed all the connections between tables and text.

With respect to the Result: Further interpretation is needed;

SD is not clear; Line 378, what are r, p, and how they are obtained?;

We have clarified these data and added that the test is a correlation test. We have made clear that the r is the correlation coefficient, this is, the strength and direction of the association of variables, and the p is how significant/relevant is this direction, accepted if under .05.

Line 388, what is RQ?; Line 389, what is M?; Line 399, “(t (1716) = 2.41, p = .016).” are these numbers presented in a table??

We deleted the RQ in this line since it is a mistake. M is “Mean” (or average) as per APA abbreviation. With regard to t test (previously in line 399), results are presented graphically in Figure 2. We have also noticed a mistake in the captions of the columns of table 2. We have amended it and we have further explained the value of Table 2. We believe that results of this part are now much easier to follow. Thanks.

Table 1: Not properly explained; It was not mentioned in the text; What does first column represent? What is FB years?;Where are the values for Mode Column?; What is N column?

We have tried to clarify and further explain Table 1. First, we have informed the category of first column, added the mode, and a footnote with the names of abbreviations at full. We have also made sure that Table 1 is mentioned in the Results section (line 378) and have placed after first paragraph of results so that it is fully connected with the text.

In table 2, why value of country is High and Low? What does it mean? On what basis they are considered Low and High??What is the threshold;

2nd column should be Gender (Mistake);

As mentioned earlier, the captions of the first and second columns in table 2 were wrong. “Country” has been substituted by “Narcissism”, “SNS use” by “Gender”, and “NPQCS” by “SNS use”. Regarding the high vs low threshold, we have added the information of the mean average and reported is as the threshold in table 2 as a footnote, in figure 2 and within the explanations in the text.

Line 404, All countries except South Korea reported positive correlations for H1 (all p-values <.005 except South Korea’s NPQC-R) ? is this shown in the table?

Yes, indeed; we have now included the significance of data for all tables with asterisks (*) and, int eh particular case of table 3, have amended the text to which these comments refer (changing “positive” for “significant”). Also, since South-Korea does not show positive correlations between social media use and the narcissism (NPQC-R), the ANOVA model that stems from these data does not consider data from this country (table 4).

Line 406, “Spanish teenagers reported the highest values of SNS use (Table 3), highest narcissism levels.” It is not the highest narcissism levels because South Korea is higher.

Yes, indeed. However, as shown in the previous comment, South Korea’s data were not statistically significant; having said this, we have rephrased the original sentence in order to make clear that we refer to statistically significant evidence.

Table 3,

in its caption, they mentioned NPI-13 but is it not in the table

How p-values are obtained?

NPI-13 data has been added in Table 3. And as mentioned, a footnote has been added to the table so that the type of test (correlation) and significance are now reported (*).

Line 415.” all p-values under .05, except South Korea)” please explain.

We have further clarified that South Korean adolescents did not show a significant correlation but we also highlight the fact that the other countries did show a significant correlations with narcissism.

Line 445, “Table 6. Social media use (SNS use) and self-appearance focused behavior use of SNS”, in other table captions SNS is mentioned without the complete phrase. Consistency is required.

We have kept the full name of variables in the titles of figures and tables (with the abbreviation in parenthesis so that the reader can easily see the equivalence when the abbreviation is used as a caption of a column or an axis of these figures and tables). Within the text, abbreviations are only used when the word is repeated in the same paragraph making sure the reader can connect it with the full word it is referring to.

Please explain Table 4

We have further developed the explanations that arise from Table 4 and Figure 3 with a more explicit illustration of the numbers in the table and the graphics in Figure 3. But, as explained, these explanations are limited and only reinforce previous data: the ANOVA model of Table 4 does not include South Korean because it stems from the high versus low narcissism divide as calculated with the mean of the NPQC-R index -being the case that South Korea had not shown correlation between social media use and NPQC-R.

Figure 1 is not mentioned in the text.

Figure 1 is highly relevant and clarifying figure in the article, so we appreciate the reviewer noticing this. The reference has been added to follow the connection of variables in the form of hypothesis and research question.

Fig 2, what is x-axis, what is y-axis?

We added the concepts being measured in the figure.

Figure 4, give full form of SCA should be added.

We added the full range of SCA and SNS use axes in figure 4.

For Figure 2,3, and 5, the threshold should be shown in the Figures

The thresholds for the variables in the three figures have been added to the very captions of those.

Attachment

Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx

Click here for additional data file.^{(127KB, docx)}

PLoS One. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0272868.r003

Decision Letter 1

Rashid Mehmood

29 Jun 2022

PONE-D-21-34574R1The use of social media as a two-way mirror for narcissistic adolescents from Austria, Belgium, South-Korea, and SpainPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Mas Manchón,

Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 13 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

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A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Rashid Mehmood, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

**********

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Reviewer #1: The authors have addressed all the comments that I had made. I recommend that the paper can be accepted.

Reviewer #2: The authors made progress but some of my comments are not addressed.

Comments:

- Table 1,

o still needs more explanation

What is N column? It is still not clear

o Line 376, “The overall mean (M) for NPQC-R was 3.6”. According to the contents in Table 1 it is 3.05??

- In the footnote for table 2, “The threshold to divide segments between high and low narcissism is the mean average of this variable, that is higher or lower than 3.05 (as also reported in Figure 2).”. Please double check.

- Table 7,

o in its caption, gender is mentioned but is it not in the table and not explained in the text

**********

7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

**********

PLoS One. 2022 Aug 31;17(8):e0272868. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0272868.r004

Author response to Decision Letter 1

30 Jun 2022

We thank the reviewer 2 for their relevant and useful comments. Reviewer #2 is addressed individually, with the reviewer’s comments in black font and our answers in blue font.

Reviewer 2

Table 1, still needs more explanation. What is N column? It is still not clear.

We see that N data is confusing in this table, so we remove it. The sample size is reported in the Method.

Line 376, “The overall mean (M) for NPQC-R was 3.6”. According to the contents in Table 1 it is 3.05??

We have double checked and the correct figure is 3.05. It has been amended. Thanks.

In the footnote for table 2, “The threshold to divide segments between high and low narcissism is the mean average of this variable, that is higher or lower than 3.05 (as also reported in Figure 2).”. Please double check.

We have double checked the average of NPQC-R and it is 3,05, not 3,6.

Table 7, in its caption, gender is mentioned but is it not in the table and not explained in the text.

We have double checked. This is a mistake in the caption; “Gender” has been removed from the caption. Thanks a lot.

Attachment

Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers1.docx

Click here for additional data file.^{(121.3KB, docx)}

PLoS One. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0272868.r005

Decision Letter 2

Rashid Mehmood

28 Jul 2022

The use of social media as a two-way mirror for narcissistic adolescents from Austria, Belgium, South-Korea, and Spain

PONE-D-21-34574R2

Dear Dr. Mas Manchón,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Rashid Mehmood, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

**********

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

**********

7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #2: No

**********

PLoS One. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0272868.r006

Acceptance letter

Rashid Mehmood

4 Aug 2022

PONE-D-21-34574R2

The use of social media as a two-way mirror for narcissistic adolescents from Austria, Belgium, South-Korea, and Spain

Dear Dr. Mas Manchón:

I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org.

If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org.

Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access.

Kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Rashid Mehmood

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Associated Data

This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

Supplementary Materials

S1 Data. Dataset Intercultural Study Project (ISP).

(XLSX)

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Click here for additional data file.^{(127KB, docx)}

Attachment

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Data Availability Statement

All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting information files.

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PERMALINK

The use of social media as a two-way mirror for narcissistic adolescents from Austria, Belgium, South-Korea, and Spain

Lluís Mas Manchón

David Badajoz Dávila

Roles

Abstract

Introduction

The relationship between social media use and narcissism

Intensity and self-appearance as narcissism indicators of social media use

The relevance of country and gender on a narcissistic use of social media

Narcissism and the extended use of Facebook

Fig 1. Model of narcissistic social media usage.

Methods

Materials, participants, and procedure

Measures

Socio-demographic correlates

Social media use (SNS use)

Facebook and Instagram use

Self-representation (Self-centered appearance presentation, SCA)

Narcissism

Results

Table 1. Preliminary descriptive statistics.

Table 2. Social media use (SNS use) by narcissism and gender.

Fig 2. Social media use mean (SNS use) by gender and narcissism.

Table 3. Social media use (SNS use) and narcissism (NPQC-R and NPI-13)*.

Table 4. Social media use (SNS use) by country, gender, and level of narcissism.

Fig 3. Social media use (SNS use) by gender, narcissism, and country.

Fig 4. Self-centered appearance focused use of social media (SCA) correlation with social media use (SNS use).

Table 5. Self-centered appearance focused use of social media (SCA) and social media (SNS use) use by gender.

Fig 5. Social media use (SNS use) in girls and boys works similarly between high/low self-centered appearance focused use of social media (SCA).

Table 6. Social media use (SNS use) and self-centered appearance focused use of social media (SCA) for each country.

Fig 6. Social media use (SNS use) in low and high self-centered appearance focused use of social media (SCA).

Table 7. Social media use (SNS use) by country, and level of narcissism.

Table 8. Self-centered appearance focused use of social media (SCA) as associated with levels of narcissism and gender.

Fig 7. Self-centered appearance focused use of social media (SCA) across low/high narcissism males and females.

Table 9. Self-centered appearance focused use of social media (SCA) by countries, gender, and low/high narcissism.

Fig 8. Self-centered appearance focused use of social media (SCA) among low/high narcissism boys and girls by countries.

Fig 9. Mediation and total effect of the self-centered appearance focused use of social media (SCA) on the link between SNS and narcissism NPI-13.

Fig 10. Model of narcissistic social media usage.

Discussion

Conclusions

Supporting information

Data Availability

Funding Statement

References

Decision Letter 0

Rashid Mehmood

Roles

Author response to Decision Letter 0

Decision Letter 1

Rashid Mehmood

Roles

Author response to Decision Letter 1

Decision Letter 2

Rashid Mehmood

Roles

Acceptance letter

Rashid Mehmood

Roles

Associated Data

Supplementary Materials

Data Availability Statement

ACTIONS

PERMALINK

RESOURCES

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Cited by other articles

Links to NCBI Databases

Table 3. Social media use (SNS use) and narcissism (NPQC-R and NPI-13)^*.