Article title: The relationship between social media addiction and depression: a quantitative study among university students in Khost, Afghanistan
Authors: Rahmatullah Haand & Zhao Shuwang
Journal: International Journal of Adolescence and Youth
Citation details: 2020, VOL. 25, NO. 1, 780–786
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02673843.2020.1741407
It has come to the attention of the Editor and Publisher that this article did not receive full peer review in accordance with the journal’s policy prior to publication, due to a processing error.
Following this discovery, the Editor conducted a post-publication peer review process by seeking the comments of two independent reviewers, which were then shared anonymously with the author.
The author subsequently revised their article and the Editor confirmed that these revisions were sufficient in addressing the feedback left by the reviewers. The revised version has now been published and replaces the previous version.
The peer review system has now been updated to prevent this happening again.
This correction statement was agreed with the authors prior to publication.
The following section has been added in the corrected version
Meanwhile, evidence from previous studies also shows that there is a link between social media usage and depression. In some recent studies, teenage and young adult users who spend the most time online on social media were shown to have a substantially higher rate of reported depression than those who spent less time online (Lin et al., 2016; Twenge et al., 2018). So, does that mean that social media are actually causing depression? These studies, including the present one, mainly demonstrate a correlation between social media usage and depression, not correlation does not necessarily mean causation. In other words, the addictive use of social media can be defined as one of the symptoms of depression, and vice versa, not an actual cause of depression. Depression might be caused by various factors; an earlier study of Rich & Scovel (1987) indicated that loneliness, interpersonal distrust, and neuroticism are strongly and consistently associated with depression. Other scholars argue that the growing popularity of social media might be another possible reason for the suspected increase in mental health problems (e.g. depression) (Twenge et al., 2018), and social media, may even increase feelings of loneliness (Song et al., 2014 cited in Twenge et al., 2018), whereas loneliness is known as one of the main symptoms of depression. For that reason, it is worth a serious look at how social media could be affecting teenagers and young adults` mental health, and our findings show that the addictive use of social media is significantly associated with depression and vice versa.
The following section has been removed in the corrected version
Recommendations: 1) It is recommended to the universities management staff to spread public awareness and avoid the overuse of social media among students. 2) It is also suggested to the policymakers in the education sector to find out proper solutions to prevent problematic use of social media in educational institutes.