Problematic social media use and social support received in real-life versus on social media: Associations with depression, anxiety and social isolation

Highlights

• We measured social support provided in real-life (RLSS) and on social media (SMSS).

• Problematic social media use (PSMU) is differentially associated with RLSS and SMSS.

• RLSS mediates the relationship between PSMU and mental health.

• SMSS does not mediate the relationship between PSMU and mental health.

Abstract

Social media platforms allow people to connect with each other and obtain social rewards. In some individuals, these reinforcing rewards can induce maladaptive, problematic social media use, with symptoms similar to substance use disorders. This problematic social media use has been associated with poorer mental health. Previous studies have demonstrated that social support can protect against poor mental health. People can receive social support both in real-life and on social media, however, so we investigated whether these two types of social support mediate the relationship between problematic social media use and poor mental health. We conducted an online survey, collecting measures of problematic social media use and mental health (depression, anxiety, and social isolation), as well as measures of real-life social support and social support received on social media. We then performed a path analysis on these data. Our analysis revealed that problematic social media use was significantly associated with decreased real-life social support and increased social support on social media. Importantly, real-life social support was then associated with reduced depression, anxiety, and social isolation, while social support on social media was not associated with these mental health measures. Our findings reveal the value of real-life social support when considering the relationship between problematic social media use and mental health. Implications for further research and practice are discussed.

Introduction

Over 3.5 billion people worldwide currently use online social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, Tik Tok, and Facebook (Statista, 2021). On these sites, people observe and interact with others, connecting and obtaining social rewards (Meshi, Tamir, & Heekeren, 2015). These social rewards act as reinforcers, bringing people back to these sites repeatedly and for substantial durations of time (Stewart, 2016). Importantly, some people’s social media use may become maladaptive and problematic, causing distress and impairment in daily functioning (Griffiths, Kuss, & Demetrovics, 2014). The symptoms of this problematic social media use mirror substance use disorders (Griffiths et al., 2014). For example, these individuals may be preoccupied with social media and use it to modify their mood, or they may try to quit social media and then display withdrawal symptoms and possibly relapse. Similar to substance use disorders, problematic social media use has also been associated with aberrations in executive functions and decision making (Delaney et al., 2018, Meshi et al., 2020, Meshi, Elizarova, Bender, & Verdejo-Garcia, 2019, Müller et al., 2021, Turel et al., 2018), and in some cases this maladaptive social media use may lead to clinical treatment (Griffiths et al., 2014, Karaiskos et al., 2010). To note however, problematic social media use is not currently included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (American Psychiatric Association, 2013), and the appropriateness of an official clinical diagnosis has been discussed in the literature (Brand et al., 2020, Carbonell and Panova, 2017). In line with this, we use the term problematic social media use, rather than social media addiction or disordered social media use.

Problematic social media use has also been consistently linked with negative mental health. For example, a meta-analysis concluded that greater problematic Facebook use is associated with greater levels of depression and anxiety (Marino, Gini, Vieno, & Spada, 2018). Another more recent meta-analysis focused on problematic use of any social media platform, not just Facebook, and demonstrated the same relationships, in that greater problematic social media use is associated with greater depression, anxiety, and loneliness (Huang, 2020). Interestingly, this association seems to hold across age groups, as researchers recently found a positive association between problematic social media use and social isolation in older adults as well (Meshi, Cotten, et al., 2020). Importantly however, the above research is correlational, and a causal relationship between problematic social media use and poor mental health has not been established. Recent longitudinal research, specifically investigating time spent on social media not problematic social media use, has attempted to address a causal link with poor mental health – several studies have found that more time on social media leads to either greater depressive symptoms (Primack, Shensa, Sidani, Escobar-Viera, & Fine, 2020) or reduced affective wellbeing (Kross et al., 2013, Verduyn et al., 2015), while another study found no causal association (Coyne, Rogers, Zurcher, Stockdale, & Booth, 2020). Researchers have also theorized that worse mental health leads to problematic social media use (Brand et al., 2019, Wegmann and Brand, 2019), or that a bidirectional relationship exists (Elhai, Levine, & Hall, 2019). Taken together, the literature demonstrates a specific link between problematic social media use and mental health, but that more research is needed to better understand this relationship.

One potential mechanism mediating this relationship could be the amount of social support that an individual receives. Researchers have speculated that more time on social media means a lack of face-to-face social interaction, and that this lack of in-person social support may be responsible for the association between problematic social media use and negative mental health (Shensa et al., 2017). Indeed, more time spent on social media has been associated with less perceived real-life social support (McDougall et al., 2016, Shensa et al., 2016). Meanwhile, greater problematic social media use has been associated with greater perceived online social support (Tang, Chen, Yang, Chung, & Lee, 2016). Tang and colleagues speculate that this finding results from an increased motivation for certain individuals to maintain interpersonal relationships, which leads to problematic social media use. Therefore, it appears that the more problematic one’s social media use, the less real-life social support and more online social support one receives. In addition, the social support experienced through social media, while perceived to be similar in quality to in-person social support (Trepte, Dienlin, & Reinecke, 2015), may be detrimental to the extent that it displaces other beneficial forms of support, such as real-life social support – real-life social support has repeatedly been shown to protect against negative mental health outcomes, such as depression and anxiety (Harandi, Taghinasab, & Nayeri, 2017). Building on this, several studies have examined the role of both real-life and online social support in relation to mental health, but these studies did not examine problematic social media use. To begin with, a cross-sectional study revealed that both real-life and online social support are associated with lower levels of depression-related thoughts and feelings (Cole, Nick, Zelkowitz, Roeder, & Spinelli, 2017). Conversely, two other cross-sectional studies demonstrated that real-life social support is associated with reduced depressive symptoms, while greater emotional social support received on Facebook is associated with greater depressive symptoms (McCloskey et al., 2015, Shensa et al., 2020). In line with this, a longitudinal study revealed that only real-life social support resulted in greater overall wellbeing, while social support provided over social media did not influence wellbeing (Trepte et al., 2015). Importantly, these studies did not examine problematic social media use, only self-reported time spent on social media.

To the best of our knowledge, only one study has investigated if social support mediates the relationship between problematic social media use and mental health. Lin and colleagues (2021) found that problematic social media use had indirect effects on both depression and anxiety via perceived real-life social support. These researchers found that the greater one’s problematic social media use, the less one’s perceived real-life social support, and the worse one’s mental health. Importantly however, these researchers did not individually assess and analyze the contributions of both real-life social support and social support provided over social media. Of note, other researchers have previously examined the mediating role of both real-life and online social support in regard to the relationship between mental health and a different type of problematic media use, problematic video gaming (Tham, Ellithorpe, & Meshi, 2020). In this video game context, these researchers found that real-world social support mediated the relationship between problematic gaming and both depression and anxiety, in that greater problematic gaming led to reduced real-world social support, and worse mental health. Importantly however, in-game social support did not mediate this relationship. With this in mind, we conducted an exploratory study, modeled on the previous mediation literature (Lin et al., 2021, Tham et al., 2020) to answer the following research question: Could social support provided in both real-life and over social media insulate against the negative mental health symptoms associated with problematic social media use?