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Symptom Patterns of Problematic Social Media Use and Psychological Distress Across Adulthood

Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Problematic social media use (PSMU) has been consistently associated with psychological distress, yet most evidence derives from young samples. Whether the relationship between PSMU and distress differs across adulthood remains largely unexamined. The study aimed (1) to examine how PSMU symptoms relate to depression, anxiety, and loneliness across different stages of adulthood and (2) to test whether the associations significantly differ across age groups. A large sample of 1,503 U.S. adults aged 30−70, stratified into four decade-representative cohorts, was analyzed using undirected Gaussian graphical models. Estimated networks were then compared using Network Comparison Tests. Psychological distress was associated with PSMU symptoms only selectively, through a small number of cross-domain edges. The strongest association was found between anxiety and using social media to forget about personal problems (w = 0.12), whereas anxiety was negatively associated with cognitive preoccupation with social media (w = −0.09). Depression and loneliness were primarily associated with impairment- and regulation-related PSMU symptoms (w = 0.05–0.10). Using social media to forget about personal problems emerged as the strongest and most stable bridge symptom connecting PSMU and psychological distress across adulthood. Network comparison analyses revealed no significant differences in overall connectivity, network structure, or individual cross-domain associations across age cohorts. These findings extend research predominantly focused on younger populations by demonstrating that psychological distress is not uniformly associated with PSMU or with the same PSMU symptoms across adulthood, while providing no evidence that the overall pattern of these relationships differs systematically by age.
DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/dnkh6_v1
Language: English
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7210268414
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