Social media use, loneliness and psychological distress in emerging adults

ABSTRACT

Social media plays a dominant role in emerging adults’ lives, with evidence showing that it can contribute to elevated levels of psychological distress. However, existing findings are contradictory, insofar as the connection between social media use (SMU) and psychological distress remains unclear. To gain a better insight into the above relationship, we focused on different styles of engagement with social media (active social, active non-social, and passive) and examined whether their impact on depression, anxiety and stress symptoms is mediated by loneliness. Data were collected via an online survey from 288 emerging adults in the UK. It was found that increased passive SMU was associated with higher anxiety, depression and stress symptoms; loneliness was associated with both SMU and psychological distress, while increased active non-social media use was associated with decreased stress. However, loneliness showed significant mediation effects only on the relation between passive SMU and psychological distress. Limitations, future research directions and suggestions for practice are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Social media use
• anxiety
• depression
• stress
• loneliness
• emerging adults

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Dr Doug Hardman for proofreading the article. Also, we are grateful to Assoc Prof Evi Katsapi, Irina Filip, Qin Wang, Amber Brench, Sophia Redpath and Jasmiina Ryynanen for their help with data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Pending acceptance for publication, all of the anonymised data files will be automatically uploaded to Online Research Data repository of Bournemouth University.