TPC Journal-Vol 10- Issue 2-FULL ISSUE

The Professional Counselor | Volume 10, Issue 2 165 can be seen in Table 2, significant semipartial correlations predicting PWB included the negativity/ instability ( r sp = -.20, p < .001), experimentation/possibilities ( r sp = .14, p < .001), and Facebook usage ( r sp = .08, p < .05) variables. Of all the predictors of PWB in the model, negativity/instability made the second largest individual contribution. Of the predictors of life satisfaction, significant semipartial correlations included experimentation/possibilities ( r sp = .20, p < .001), negativity/instability ( r sp = -.15, p < .001), feeling in between ( r sp = -.07, p < .05), and Facebook usage ( r sp = .07, p < .05). The experimentation/possibilities variable made the second largest individual contribution to life satisfaction. However, because identity exploration was not significant for either outcome variable, and feeling in between was not significant for life satisfaction, Hypothesis 2 was only partially supported. Collectively, the emerging adulthood and Facebook variables accounted for 7.4% of unique variance in PWB and 7.1% of unique variance in life satisfaction. Discussion The present findings yield several useful contributions. First, they bridge disparate threads of research by comparing the contributions of well-established mental health predictors with those of constructs unique to present-day college students, each of which contributed uniquely to college student mental health. Although many of the effects of the individual variables were small, the emerging adulthood and Facebook variables collectively explained roughly 7% of unique variance in the mental health variables over and above that explained by the more well-established constructs. As such, the findings are consistent with the assertion that constructs like attachment, ego resilience, and social support, while useful to conceptualizing college student mental health, may nevertheless be aided by also considering factors unique to 21st-century students. The positive associations between Facebook usage and college student mental health are noteworthy, given the current disagreement regarding the impact of social media use. Contrary to concerns regarding social media overuse (e.g., Twenge, 2013), the present study found that Facebook usage positively predicted PWB and life satisfaction, albeit with a small effect. This was true even after controlling for other predictor variables, suggesting that Facebook provided a small but unique contribution to college student mental health. This finding supports the conclusions of Manago et al. (2012) that Facebook can fulfill certain social support needs for students. There may also be negative implications for societal reliance on social media use (e.g., Twenge, 2013), including its promotion of unhealthy comparison behaviors and cyberbullying. Nevertheless, the present findings and those of Manago et al. demonstrate the positive contributions of social media to college student mental health. The significance of some of the emerging adulthood variables also warrants discussion. The degree to which participants identified with emerging adulthood being a period of experimentation and possibilities was positively associated with PWB and life satisfaction, while the degree to which they identified with emerging adulthood being a period of negativity and instability was negatively associated with PWB and life satisfaction. Moreover, identifying emerging adulthood as a time of feeling in between adolescence and adulthood was negatively associated with life satisfaction. Even after accounting for all other control and predictor variables, emerging adult instability was the second strongest predictor of PWB (after ego resilience), while emerging adult experimentation/possibilities was the second strongest predictor of life satisfaction (after social support). These findings add important context to prior empirical conclusions that emerging adulthood is associated with negative mental health (Baggio et al., 2015). That is, while each of the dimensions of emerging adulthood represents important developmental processes toward reaching adulthood (Arnett, 2004), only some of these dimensions (especially viewing emerging adulthood as a period of experimentation or instability) seem relevant