Exploring the Associations between Social Media Addiction and Depression: Attentional Bias as a Mediator and Socio-Emotional Competence as a Moderator

Abstract

Social media is used daily by a significant number of young people and can have an important influence on the well-being of its users. The aim of this study was to determine the motives for social media use among Chinese youth and whether social media addiction associates with depression. Another objective was to analyze possible mediating and moderating effects in explaining the association between social media addiction and depression. Participants were 1652 secondary school students (51.5% boys and 48.5% girls) aged 12-18 years in China. The results showed that attention bias mediated the association between social media addiction and depression when adolescents' socio-emotional competencies were low, but not as strong when their socio-emotional competencies were high. The findings not only provided theoretical support for preventing the negative effects of mobile social media addiction, but could also directly contribute to improving adolescents' quality of life.

Keywords: adolescents; anxiety; attentional bias; depression; mobile social media addiction; socio-emotional competencies.

Figure 1

The proposed conceptual scheme.

Figure 2

Depression predicted by attention to positive information moderated by socio-emotional skills. +1 SD, one standard deviation above the mean; −1 SD, one standard deviation below the mean.

Figure 3

Depression predicted by attention to negative information moderated by socio-emotional skills. +1 SD, one standard deviation above the mean; −1 SD, one standard deviation below the mean.