SynthesisPloS one2025
Correlations between social media addiction and anxiety, depression, FoMO, loneliness and self-esteem among students: A systematic review and meta-analysis.
Synthesis in PloS one, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed.
- Social Media Disorder, Mental Health, and Physical Activity.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Digital Intelligence, Emotional Intelligence, Self-Disclosure, and Fear of Missing Out Among Thai Generation Z: A Cross-Sectional PLS-SEM Study.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2026Article
- Peer pressure and fear of missing out among university students in the social media environment: the influence mechanism of self‑authenticity.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Digital addiction comorbidity patterns and their differential links to internalizing symptoms, suicidal behaviors and non-suicidal self-injury in vocational high school students.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Article
- Social media addiction in five major mental disorders: a cross-sectional comparative study.BMC psychiatry · 2026Article
- Consumer anxiety: A scoping review and research agenda.PloS one · 2026Article
- Problematic use of generative artificial intelligence chatbots: current stage of conceptual and clinical understanding.Frontiers in public health · 2026Review
- How does social media addiction make you fear exercise? The relationship between social media addiction and kinesiophobia among college students: the mediating role of social physique anxiety.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Fear of missing out (FoMO) in the digital age: implications for academic productivity and sleep quality among Saudi university students.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Social media addiction and social anxiety among college students: the serial mediating roles of alienation, self-focused attention, and fear of negative evaluation.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Differential pathways linking social interaction and Loneliness among university students in the age of artificial intelligence: the mediating role of Social Capital.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- The Impact of Digital Platform Rules on the Mental Health of Minors and the Response of Chinese Law: An Analysis Based on Therapeutic Jurisprudence.Psychology research and behavior management · 2026Review
- The relationship between loneliness and social networking site addiction among Chinese college students: the roles of fear of missing out and the imaginary audience.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND
aimsWith the ubiquity of the internet, social media have become an essential part of daily life. There are various types of social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, WeChat and SNS. Social media addiction (SMA) was found to be significantly associated with mental health concerns, self-esteem, fear of missing out (FoMO), and loneliness on the basis of a literature review concerning SMA. To further explore the connections between SMA and anxiety, depression, self-esteem, FoMO and loneliness, we performed a meta-analysis to quantitatively synthesize the previous findings.
methodsThe PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Chinese Biological Medicine (CBM) and Technology Journal Database (VIP) databases were accessed to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis. This search was updated in April. Pooled Pearson's correlation coefficients between SMA and anxiety, depression, loneliness, FoMO and self-esteem were calculated with STATA software via a random or fixed effects model.
resultsThirty-two studies involving a total of 26166 students were identified. The meta-analysis revealed positive correlations between SMA and anxiety, depression, loneliness and FoMO (anxiety: summary r = 0.31, 95% CI = 0.25-0.36, P < 0.001; depression: summary r = 0.31, 95% CI = 0.27-0.34, P < 0.001; loneliness: summary r = 0.21, 95% CI = 0.13-0.29, P < 0.001; FoMO: summary r = 0.41, 95% CI = 0.36-0.45, P < 0.001). A negative correlation was found between self-esteem and SMA (self-esteem: summary r = -0.24, 95% Cl = -0.26- -0.22, P<0.001).
conclusionsThis meta-analysis revealed that SMA was positively associated with anxiety, depression and loneliness but negatively associated with self-esteem. These findings indicate that students with SMA are more likely to suffer from anxiety, depression and loneliness. Conducting larger prospective studies would be beneficial to verify our findings.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.