Social Media Addiction and Poor Mental Health: Examine and Role of Internet Addiction

Abstract

The development of social media took off at a rapid pace, and due to this, there have been concerns about the negative impact it can have on mental health. Though the relationship between the addiction to social media and the mental health outcomes, i.e., depression and anxiety, has been already tested in the previous researches, the given study is dedicated to the relationship between SMA and mental health outcomes, i.e., depression, and anxiety, with the intermediate of IA. Structural equation model was utilized using a sample of 603 students studying in universities to test the proposed model with the control of age, gender, and time of using digital technologies. The results indicate that SMA is not directly related to depression and anxiety instead its impacts are completely mediated by IA. These findings underscore the problematic internet use at the center of defining how excessive use of social media is among the reasons leading to poor mental health. The paper provides a more parsimonious and theoretically based model and adds to the existing literature.

Keywords:  Social Media Addiction (SMA), Internet Addiction (IA), Depression, Anxiety, Mental health.