The roles of adolescents’ emotional problems and social media addiction on their self-esteem

Abstract

Adolescents’ emotional problems and excessive social media use could deteriorate their self-esteem. The aim of the present study was to investigate the contributions of adolescents’ emotional problems and social media addiction to their self-esteem, with the particular interest of testing the mediating role of the social media addiction on the association between emotional problems and self-esteem. Participants were 221 adolescents (49.3% female) aging from 13 to 17 years (M = 15.86, SD = 0.91). Participants reported on their emotional problems, social media addiction, and self-esteem. Results from regression analyses showed that the higher levels of emotional problems and social media addiction were related to lower levels of self-esteem. In addition, social media addiction partiality mediated the association between emotional problems and self-esteem indicating that the adolescents with higher levels of emotional problems tended to report higher levels of social media addiction and, in turn this tendency was related to lower levels of self-esteem.