College Student Depressive Symptoms Linked to Feeling Worse During Social Media Use and Engaging in Social Media in More Emotionally Negative Ways: An Experimental Approach

Despite significant interest in how social media use (SMU) is associated with college student depression, little consensus has been drawn in this area. We argue that a critical step forward is examining how college student depressive symptoms are associated with (a) the emotions students experience while engaged in SMU and (b) how individuals choose to engage in weekly SMU in ways known to impact their emotions. Data were collected in 2022. College students (N = 382) engaged in four SMU types (order randomized) for 3 min in real time during a controlled experiment. They rated their negative affect and positive affect before and after each SMU type. They also completed measures assessing weekly engagement in each SMU type and depressive symptoms. We examined how depressive symptoms were associated with (a) affect change during each SMU type during the experiment (i.e., experimental approach) and (b) with how people engaged in weekly SMU in ways known to influence their emotions experimentally (i.e., person-based survey approach). Depressive symptoms were associated with students feeling worse (more negative affect or less positive affect) during real-time engagement in all four SMU types. Depressive symptoms were also associated with greater weekly engagement in SMU types that were the ones that increased that person’s negative affect and decreased their positive affect. By considering multiple types of SMU and taking a person-based approach, our findings help clarify complicated associations between SMU and depression.