Beyond a straight line: use-disorder and social media-related well-being across regional clusters

As social media becomes increasingly embedded in daily life, understanding the relationship between its positive and problematic use has become a global priority. Using data from the 2023 Global Digital Wellbeing Survey (N = 30,994 across 35 countries), we investigated how symptoms of Social Media Disorder (SMD) relate to social media-related well-being (SMWB) measured across dimensions of PERMA model. Both constructs showed substantial cross-national variation, however, the different rates of SMD were not consistently associated with certain rates of poor SMWB suggesting that the relationship between the problematic and positive social media use is neither linear nor globally uniform. We applied latent profile analysis to identify distinct configurations defined by specific combinations of SMD symptoms and SMWB scores. These profiles were structurally consistent across regions, suggesting shared global patterns in how individuals experience social media. At the same time, their prevalence across regions varied significantly, reflecting sociocultural differences in how SMD and SMWB co-occur. The findings challenge severity-based models that treat problematic use as universally associated with diminished well-being on social media and highlight the need to study both problematic and positive use without assuming a straightforward negative relationship between them. Therefore, solutions for digital well-being and social media addiction should address this relationship, while also taking into account the cultural and regional context.