A Longitudinal study on the relation between adolescents` media use and personality: A secondary analysis of the Korea Youth Panel Survey 2003-2006

Despite the significance of the question of whether media use changes a person's personality or vice versa, not many studies attempt to directly answer the question. This study attempts to compare and verify the relation between adolescents' media use and personality, through an analysis of the National Youth Policy Institutes Korea Youth Panel Survey 2003-2006. Our analysis of longitudinal relation based on the massive data produced the following results: the hypothesis that the use of specific media leads to certain personality does not conflict with the hypothesis that certain people favor specific media. In other words, depending on how long one uses a specific media, his or her personality such as self-satisfaction and gender bias can change. Moreover, depending on the type of personality one has, the use of media like TV, games, and mobile phone also varied. According to this study, the use of TV and games weakened adolescents self-satisfaction while adolescents with low self-satisfaction also used TV and games to a greater degree. We suggest that there is a vicious cycle occurring between the adolescents use of TV and games and their self-esteem, self-confidence, and life satisfaction. Because this study was a secondary analysis of pre-existing data, it has its flaws, especially in the sense that we could not measure the media use variables elaborately. Also, the scope of the personality variables were somewhat insufficient. The study has its limitations in that we did not use advanced statistical tools in identifying the correlation between the media use variables and the personality variables. Nevertheless, the study poses some significant implications, given that it explored the fundamental question in the communication area by conducting the survey administering the same questionnaire to the same panel - 2,796 adolescents - over the four years. This attempt has a significant implication for the communication discipline in general. Key academic questions can be best explored under long term studies that examines the causal relations. Further panel studies with rigorous literature reviews, valid conceptualizations, elaborate analyses and massive samples that are representative of the population should be undertaken in the field of journalism and communication