Problematic social media use and adolescent mental well-being
Although the role of social media in youth mental health has been recently examined, how social inequalities structure the relationship between social media use and adolescent well-being across countries remains unclear. Employing a micro-macro framework, this study examines how family-level socioec...
| Autores: | , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2026 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona |
| Repositorio: | Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:dnet:uabarcelona_::fef4aa77c20c4cdc17df677e3aa03167 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://ddd.uab.cat/record/327502 https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.1080/1369118X.2026.2639568 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Adolescent mental well-being Cross-national research Problematic social media use Socioeconomic inequalities SDG 3 - Good health and well-being SDG 10 - Reduced inequalities |
| Sumario: | Although the role of social media in youth mental health has been recently examined, how social inequalities structure the relationship between social media use and adolescent well-being across countries remains unclear. Employing a micro-macro framework, this study examines how family-level socioeconomic status (SES) and country-level income inequalities moderate the relationship between Problematic Social Media Use (PSMU)-a concept of risk-related social media use-and adolescents' psychological complaints and life satisfaction. Analyses apply mixed-effect multilevel models to data from 35 countries participating in the Health Behaviour of School Aged Children (HBSC) study (N∼145,000). Results show that PSMU is associated with higher psychological complaints and lower life satisfaction consistently across countries. Yet, these effects are stronger for low-SES adolescents than for high-SES adolescents, especially for life satisfaction. At the country level, the relationship between PSMU and poorer adolescent mental well-being is curvilinear, being larger in medium-inequality countries than in both low- and high-inequality countries. Additionally, the observed SES gaps in the association between PSMU and adolescent mental well-being persist across countries with different levels of inequality. Overall, this study shows that risk-related social media behaviours may harm low-SES adolescents more than high-SES adolescents, whereas the relationship between PSMU and adolescent mental well-being is largest in countries with medium income inequality levels. |
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