“Social Media and Psychological Well-Being”, 2022 ():
This chapter describes authors’ research group’s efforts to tackle the question of social media use and its relationships to psychological well-being.
For the past several years, the authors have reviewed this entire literature 2006–122018 as part of a large meta-analysis. The chapter is organized first around this meta-analysis and the empirical findings for key questions concerning social media use and well-being.
It reviews the many conceptual mechanisms that authors have proposed for how social media and well-being may be linked. Next, the chapter highlights some changes that are required for the field to improve the understanding of social media and well-being.
It finally describes how the field can move forward focusing on some new methods that the authors believe will advance the field as well as some new conceptualizations that could be important in rethinking the relationship between social media and well-being.
…Our analysis included all empirical studies examining the relationship between social media use and 6 types of psychological well-being (depression, anxiety, loneliness, eudaimonic, hedonic, and social) 2006–122018. After reviewing 5,214 articles from the 4 largest databases in psychology, communication, and human-computer interaction, we applied a careful inclusion and exclusion review, which resulted in a final sample of 226 peer-reviewed papers. Across all the papers, there were a total of n = 275,728 participants and a total of 1,279 effect sizes calculated.
…Following this approach, we found that the weighted mean effect size across all studies was r = 0.01 [−0.02, 0.04]. This effect is not only very small, but it is also a very precise estimate around zero, with the 95% confidence interval indicating that the relationship between social media use and well-being was a correlation somewhere between r = −0.02 and r = 0.04 and therefore non-statistically-significant. Thus, when we look across all the studies conducted between 2006 through 2018, including all 6 types of well-being, social media use is not statistically-significantly associated with well-being—it is neither good nor bad.
…The measured effect sizes between social media use and overall well-being have become more negative over time, although the change represents a very small effect size, going from roughly r = 0.05 in 2006 at the start of research on social media and well-being to r = −0.01 in 2018. [decline effect]