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1/n Important update to this thread

The latest student survey wave used a panel design, which allows me to assess whether political social media activity frequency at time 1 predicts political manichaenism at time 2 (net of the effects of the latter at..
2/n ...time 1). Specifically, I specified a cross-lagged model that regresses political Manichaeism (t2) on lagged political Manichaeism (t1) and political social media activity (t1), while also regressing social media activity (t2) on lagged manichaenism and social media.
3/n The results do, in fact, reveal a significant relationship between social media activity at time 1 and Manichaeism scores at time 2. This relationship is also robust to a potential confound (lagged political interest+discussion frequency).
4/n In other words, the results *suggest* that the frequency of one's political social media activity has a positive causal effect on hostility towards liberals/conservatives. This is significant insofar as there's currently a lack of consensus in the literature as to whether...
5/5...social media use heightens polarization. I'll refrain from making any strong conclusions, though, until the finding is (or isn't) replicated in the next survey wave (tbs, to publish this, I'll likely need to replicate it still again on a nationally representative sample).
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