Background: Previous studies suggest that social media use among the youth is correlated with online and offline political participation. There is also a mixed and inconclusive debate on whether more online political participation in the youth increases their offline political participation. Methods: This study uses three models of OLS, two-way fixed effects, and an instrumental variable approach to make causal inferences about social media use, online, and offline political participation of the youth. Findings: The analyses provide evidence of a large effect of casual social media use on online political participation, and no effect or negligible effect on offline political participation and voting behavior. The results from fixed effects and instrumental variable models provide strong evidence of elasticity between online and offline political participation in young individuals. On average, a one percent increase in online political participation increases the offline political activity index by 0.12 percent.

翻译：背景：先前研究表明，青年群体的社交媒体使用与其线上及线下政治参与存在相关性。关于青年群体线上政治参与的增加是否会提升其线下政治参与，学界存在矛盾且尚无定论。方法：本研究采用普通最小二乘法（OLS）、双向固定效应模型及工具变量法三种实证模型，对青年群体的社交媒体使用、线上政治参与及线下政治参与进行因果推断。研究发现：分析结果显示，随意社交媒体使用对线上政治参与具有显著影响，但对线下政治参与和投票行为的影响可忽略不计或未达显著水平。固定效应模型与工具变量法的结果提供了有力证据，表明青年群体的线上与线下政治参与之间存在弹性关系。平均而言，线上政治参与每增长1%，线下政治活动指数将提升0.12%。