Social-Media-Based Mental Health Interventions: Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

Abstract

Background: Compared with other forms of online mental health interventions, programs delivered through social media apps may require less training and be more acceptable and accessible to various populations. During and after the pandemic, both the number of social media users and the prevalence of social-media-based mental health interventions increased significantly. However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no meta-analysis so far has focused on rigorous social-media-based mental health interventions for general populations. Objective: This preregistered meta-analysis synthesized findings from rigorously designed randomized controlled trials (RCTs) (ie, decent sample size, low attrition, and comparable baseline conditions) to understand whether social-media-based mental health RCTs work as expected in reducing mental health issues. Methods: We searched for articles through database queries, hand searching, and forward and backward citation tracking, which yielded 11,658 studies. We only included social-media-based RCTs with a decent sample size (n≥30 for each experimental condition at baseline assessment), low differential attrition between treatments and controls (<15%), equivalent baseline conditions (differences between conditions <0.25 SDs), published after 2005, and delivered by nonresearchers. These RCTs must aim at reducing mental health issues, such as depression, anxiety, and stress. We excluded one-item outcome measures. Results: After double-blinded screening, 17 eligible studies (total sample sizes=5624) were included in this meta-analysis. Meta-regression results showed that, on average, these social-media-based interventions were effective (effect size [ES]=0.32, P