A Systematic Review: The Association Between Social Media Use, Social Media Addiction, and Depression in Adolescents

Abstract

With the development of technology, social media has become the main way for people to communicate with others and entertain themselves. At the same time, depression is one of the most common mental disorders. About 4.3% of people in the world are diagnosed with depression. Many researchers pay attention to the relationship between social media and depression. They did surveys to measure depression and the level of social media addiction or use and tested the correlation between them. Surveys are only able to get a correlation but not accurate causation, and most related researches used the same method. Because of simply using surveys during research, mechanisms between social media use, social media addiction, and depression need further exploration. Our review aims at finding the universal result of various previous researches and presenting suggestions on method selection for later researches. We reviewed 15 articles and offered a summary of previous methods and results. Our review found that the methods used are limited, and it is necessary to find new approaches to get a more specific relationship. Controversial results suggested that further and more careful research are needed. A universally used scale for depression and social media use or addiction would be helpful for investigating related fields. They should also focus on the mechanism but not only the correlation between some variables.