Quality of Social-Media Use May Matter More Than Frequency of Use for Adolescents’ Depression

To the Editor:

Twenge, Joiner, Rogers, and Martin (2018) have discussed the increase in depressive symptoms among adolescent girls after 2010 and how it may be related, among other factors, to the increased amount of time spent on new media, especially social media. The authors reported interesting but small links between electronic-device use and suicide-related outcomes. Even smaller correlations between social-media use and depression emerged.

Substantial research exists on the relations between frequency of Internet use and youths’ mental health. However, it is crucial to distinguish between frequent social-media use and problematic use, because the amount of time spent online is not necessarily indicative of problematic use. Although social-media addiction has not yet been recognized as a legitimate disorder, use of social media can become problematic and can be characterized by addiction-type symptoms.

Most studies on problematic social-media use conducted in the past decade have focused on problematic Facebook use (PFU). In a recent meta-analysis (Marino, Gini, Vieno, & Spada, 2018a), we found a medium positive correlation between PFU and depression, r = .35, 95% confidence interval, or CI = [.30, .41], and a negative correlation between PFU and life satisfaction, r = –.19, 95% CI = [–.29, –.08]. Some studies failed to report separate effects for girls and boys, and thus we could not test for gender differences in these links. However, another meta-analysis (Marino, Gini, Vieno, & Spada, 2018b) showed that female participants tended to have higher levels of PFU than male participants, Cohen’s d = 0.15, 95% CI = [.07, .24]. Moreover, the correlation between PFU and time spent online, r = .32, 95% CI = [.28, .36], confirmed that problematic use of social media is linked with, but is not identical to, the frequency of use.

Little is known about how problematic use of social media interacts with other risk factors (e.g., lack of face-to-face interaction skills or of social support) that may make youths more likely to use new technologies in an unsafe manner or worsen the negative effects of problematic use. Interpersonal theories of depression describe a complex interplay between individual characteristics and social experiences in a social world that, over the past decade, has been dramatically transformed by the pervasive adoption of social technologies. It is of paramount importance to explore specific online behaviors that may clarify for which individuals associations with depressive symptoms may be more present.