Social media use and transdiagnostic dimensions of psychopathology: Relative effects of frequency and problematic social media use

Background: Social media has been identified as a possible risk factor for depression in young adults, though it is unclear if it is associated with other dimensions of psychopathology. Moreover, it is unclear what aspects of social media use beyond frequency are associated to symptoms. Methods: A large sample of young adults (N= 7453) participated in a screening of transdiagnostic symptoms of psychopathology (i.e., depression, panic, generalized anxiety, social anxiety, alcohol use, drug use, insomnia, and pain). We correlated depression scores to time spent on social media and problematic social media use. We used a principal components analysis to identify shared dimensions of psychopathology and explored the correlations between symptom dimensions and social media use. Results: Participants who reported higher social media usage exhibited significantly higher self-reported depression. Our PCA suggested two dimensions of psychopathology consistent with the HiTOP model which we dubbed “emotional” and “externalizing” symptoms. Time spent on social media was correlated with emotional symptoms and with externalizing symptoms, albeit to a lesser extent. However, these associations were not significant after controlling for problematic social media use, which had differential relations to dimensions of psychopathology. e-value analysis suggested that unmeasured confounds could potentially explain these associations. Discussion: The association between time spent on social media and psychopathology could be accounted for by the way in which social media is used. However, unmeasured confounding remains a threat to these inferences.