Findings are highly relevant for the development of guidelines for the safe use of social media and calls on industry to more tightly regulate hours of social media use. Our findings highlight the potential pitfalls of lengthy social media use for young people's mental health. Multiple potential intervening pathways were apparent, for example: greater hours social media use related to body weight dissatisfaction (≥ 5 h 31% more likely to be dissatisfied), which in turn linked to depressive symptom scores directly (body dissatisfaction 15% higher depressive symptom scores) and indirectly via self-esteem. Greater social media use related to online harassment, poor sleep, low self-esteem and poor body image in turn these related to higher depressive symptom scores. Compared with 1–3 h of daily use: 3 to < 5 h 26% increase in scores vs 21% ≥ 5 h 50% vs 35% for girls and boys respectively. The magnitude of association between social media use and depressive symptoms was larger for girls than for boys.

Multivariate regression and path models were used to examine associations between social media use and depressive symptoms. We used population based data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study on 10,904 14 year olds.

This paper i) assesses whether social media use is associated with adolescents' depressive symptoms, and ii) investigates multiple potential explanatory pathways via online harassment, sleep, self-esteem and body image. We discuss boundary conditions and implications for future communication research.Įvidence suggests social media use is associated with mental health in young people but underlying processes are not well understood. Overall, results indicate that users can be inspired from comparing upwards on SNS, which may briefly improve their well-being. The preregistered Study 2 (N = 408) replicates these findings. Study 1 (N = 270) provides first evidence that users react to more positive, optimized Instagram nature and travel posts with stronger upward comparison, which facilitates inspiration via an assimilative emotional reaction (benign envy), thus enhancing well-being. We conducted two experiments that tested whether and how cognitive-affective processing of visual SNS postings results in inspiration.

However, prior research has largely neglected that upward comparisons on SNS may also facilitate positive outcomes, specifically media-induced inspiration, a motivational state highly conducive to well-being. Passive exposure to others’ positive self-presentations on social network sites (SNS) such as Instagram has been repeatedly associated with reduced well-being, particularly by triggering upward social comparison and envy. Possible explanations and future directions are discussed as to what could explain the positive relationship between self-compassion and Instagram use.

Whilst higher levels of self-compassion were associated with lower levels of reported depression, anxiety, and stress, the relationship between Instagram intensity and self-compassion was not mediated to the extent as expected by wellbeing. Instagram intensity appeared to influence psychological wellbeing, with participants who spent more time on Instagram reporting poorer psychological wellbeing. A cross-sectional study was conducted to investigate this relationship amongst young adults (n = 173), utilizing a revised version of The Multidimensional Facebook Intensity Scale to explore Instagram, The Self-Compassion Scale, and the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale. This research aimed to investigate the relationship between Instagram use and self-compassion, and whether this relationship can be explained through the relation to psychological wellbeing (depression, anxiety, and stress). In order to protect individuals from social stressors, research illustrates the role that self-compassion can play, with individuals high in self-compassion reporting greater emotional wellbeing hence, proposing self-compassion could be a trait that is positively related to social media use. Previous research acknowledges that prolonged social media use is associated with several negative psychological consequences, including higher levels of depression, anxiety, and stress.

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