TY - JOUR
T1 - The association between depression and addictive social media use during the COVID-19 pandemic
T2 - The mediating role of sense of control
AU - Vally, Zahir
AU - Helmy, Mai
AU - Fourie, Louis
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Vally et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2023/9/8
Y1 - 2023/9/8
N2 - BACKGROUND: COVID-19 precipitated a plethora of mental health difficulties, particularly for those with pre-existing mental health concerns such as depression or addictive tendencies. For some, the distress that emanated from the experience of the pandemic prompted excessive engagement in the safety of online interactions on social media. The present study examined whether variation in individuals' sense of control explained the association between depression and addictive social media use.METHOD: A sample of 1322 participants from two Middle Eastern nations provided data collected during the peak of the pandemic from February to May 2021. A combination of convenience and snowball sampling were used to recruit and collect data from college-aged students enrolled at two universities in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, respectively. This study adopted a cross-sectional design in which participants completed a self-administered survey that consisted of measures that assessed depressive affect, sense of control, and addictive social media use.RESULTS: Depression was significantly and positively associated with addictive SMU. Sense of control was negatively related to both depression and SMU and significantly mediated the association between these two variables (β = .62, SE = .03, 95%CI .56, .68).CONCLUSION: This study identified a potential protective variable that could be targeted by psychological treatment to ameliorate the potential onset of addictive SMU in individuals with depressive symptoms under conditions of immense psychological distress such as a worldwide pandemic.
AB - BACKGROUND: COVID-19 precipitated a plethora of mental health difficulties, particularly for those with pre-existing mental health concerns such as depression or addictive tendencies. For some, the distress that emanated from the experience of the pandemic prompted excessive engagement in the safety of online interactions on social media. The present study examined whether variation in individuals' sense of control explained the association between depression and addictive social media use.METHOD: A sample of 1322 participants from two Middle Eastern nations provided data collected during the peak of the pandemic from February to May 2021. A combination of convenience and snowball sampling were used to recruit and collect data from college-aged students enrolled at two universities in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, respectively. This study adopted a cross-sectional design in which participants completed a self-administered survey that consisted of measures that assessed depressive affect, sense of control, and addictive social media use.RESULTS: Depression was significantly and positively associated with addictive SMU. Sense of control was negatively related to both depression and SMU and significantly mediated the association between these two variables (β = .62, SE = .03, 95%CI .56, .68).CONCLUSION: This study identified a potential protective variable that could be targeted by psychological treatment to ameliorate the potential onset of addictive SMU in individuals with depressive symptoms under conditions of immense psychological distress such as a worldwide pandemic.
KW - Humans
KW - Young Adult
KW - COVID-19/epidemiology
KW - Pandemics
KW - Cross-Sectional Studies
KW - Depression/epidemiology
KW - Internal-External Control
KW - Social Media
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UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/cfa90937-36e7-3354-9c74-b9c45c8c3d99/
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0291034
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0291034
M3 - Article
C2 - 37683017
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 18
SP - e0291034
JO - PLoS One
JF - PLoS One
IS - 9
M1 - e0291034
ER -