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Abstract

The goal of the study was to understand the mechanisms of how social networking sites (SNS) usage is related to depression symptoms, as measured by the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression Scale (CESD). Three studies were conducted to examine the mediation roles of self-esteem and Fear of Missing Out (FoMO). In Study 1, among 347 Chinese college students, time spent on SNS was negatively associated with self-esteem; while self-esteem then negatively associated with depression symptoms. In Study 2, among 180 Chinese college students, time spent on SNS was positively related to FoMO; while FoMO then positively related to depression symptoms. In Study 3, among 233 Chinese university students, both self-esteem and FoMO were simultaneously included in the mediation model to test their respective roles in explaining depression symptoms. Results showed that more time spent on SNS was related to lower self-esteem, and higher FoMO, respectively; while self-esteem then negatively, and FoMO then positively, explained depression symptoms, respectively. In addition, when participants spent 3.5 h (Study 1), 2.5 h (Study 2), and 2.54 h (Study 3) on SNS, they reached the cutoff for subthreshold depression, as measured by CESD. Combining results from three studies, both self-esteem and FoMO mediated the relation between SNS usage and depression symptoms. This study provides implications to understand the mechanism of SNS-related depression.

۱٫ Introduction

Social networking sites (SNS) allow people to communicate, however, research has remained inconclusive as to whether SNS promotes or harms subjective well-being, and its underlying mechanism. While a meta-analysis suggested that the majority of studies on online social technologies resulted in either mixed or no effect(s) on adolescent’s well-being [1], another meta-analysis with 68,964 participants suggested that students who overused the internet tended to have a lower subjective well-being [2]. A couple of mediation research suggested several factors in explaining the relations between SNS usage and psychological well-being [3,4]. Nevertheless, another recent systematic review which studied social media addiction and well-being suggested that the term well-being should be differentiated into positive vs. negative well-being [5]. Indeed, results of this systematic review suggested that negative well-being correlated with addiction scales highly, while other well-being scales had a smaller or no correlation with social media addiction. Therefore, it is worth investigating the relation between SNS usage and negative well-being such as depression symptoms. As “SNS depression” has attracted research attention, this paper focused on how usage of SNS, notably time spent on it, would be related to depression symptoms via fear of missing out (FoMO) and self-esteem (SE). A number of studies suggested the association between social media or SNS usage with depression is a worldwide phenomenon among American, Turkish and Chinese youth [6–۸]. In a meta-analysis, a small, positive, significant association between using SNS and symptoms of depression was found [9]. Studying the mechanisms of how SNS usage explains depression via mediators will shed light in understanding this relationship. In this paper, we proposed two mediators, self-esteem and FoMO. Three studies were conducted to test the two mediation mechanisms.