Psychological distress, social media use, and academic performance of medical students: the mediating role of coping style

Abstract

Background: Given that social media use (SMU) is an increasingly widespread activity among university students, more information is needed to evaluate its relationship with students' mental health, particularly medical students.

Objective: The present study assessed the relationships between SMU and coping style with psychological distress and academic performance of medical students.

Methods: An offline cross-sectional survey conducted with 398 undergraduate medical students. The survey collected data on demographics, psychological distress (DASS-21), coping strategies (Brief COPE Scale), academic performance (grade point average) and estimated average time spent on social media per day. Structural equation modeling was used to clarify relationships between the main study variables. The study also examined the mediating effect of maladaptive coping between SMU and psychological distress.

Results: Students with higher levels of psychological distress were more likely to be engaged in frequent social media use. Spending more than two hours a day on social media use had a positive association with maladaptive coping (p < 0.001), particularly with substance use and behavioral disengagement both of which could negatively affect academic performance. Maladaptive coping mediated the relationship between students' SMU and psychological distress.

Conclusion: The findings suggest that medical students commonly use social media as a maladaptive coping tool to deal with psychological distress. Empowering students to adopt and foster appropriate coping strategies could help them to enhance resilience against life stresses and ameliorate potential long-term mental health consequences associated with maladaptive behaviors.

Keywords: Academic performance; Anxiety; Coping strategies; Depression; Medical students; Psychological distress; Social media use; Stress.

Fig. 1

Structural equation modeling of associations between average daily times spent on social media use (SMU), adaptive and maladaptive coping scores, psychological distress (measured by DASS-21 scores) and academic performance (measured by grade point average [GPA]). Numbers between boxes are standardized path coefficients

Fig. 2

Mediating effects of coping strategies (adaptive and maladaptive coping) on the relationship between social media use (SMU) and psychological distress among the participants (N = 398). *: statistically significant. a: (Unstandardized coefficient and standard error of the association between the independent variable [X] and the mediator variable[M]). b: Unstandardized coefficient and standard error of the association between the mediator variable [M] and the dependent variable [Y]. c: Unstandardized coefficient and standard error of total effect of the independent variable [X] on dependent variable [Y]. IF [Indirect effect]: Unstandardized coefficient and standard error of indirect effect [IF] of the independent variable [X] on dependent variable [Y]