Does Objectively Measured Social-Media or Smartphone Use Predict Depression, Anxiety, or Social Isolation Among Young Adults?
Open accessPublished version of a preprint
Abstract
Despite a plethora of research, the link between digital-technology use and psychological distress among young adults remains inconclusive. Findings in this area are typically undermined by methodological limitations related to measurement, study design, and statistical analysis. Addressing these limitations, we examined the prospective, within-persons associations between three aspects of objectively measured digital-technology use (duration and frequency of smartphone use, duration of social-media use) and three aspects of psychological distress (depression, anxiety, and social isolation) among a sample of young adults ( N = 384). Across 81 different model specifications, we found that most within-persons prospective effects between digital-technology use and psychological distress were statistically nonsignificant, and all were very small—even the largest effects were unlikely to register a meaningful impact on a person’s psychological distress. In post hoc subgroup analyses, we found scant evidence for the claim that digital-technology use is more harmful for women and/or younger people.
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Device-based measures can provide a more accurate assessment of social media use than self-reported tools.
“It was recently suggested that that device-based measures can provide a more accurate assessment of social media use than self-reported tools (Parry et al., 2021;Sewall et al., 2022).”
From Relation Between Social Media Use and Body Image Concerns and Disordered Eating in Adolescence: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (2026) · cites this paper as Sewall et al., 2022
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References 64 · Cited by 64
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- Muthén LK, & Muthén BO (2017). Mplus User’s Guide (8th ed.). Muthén & Muthén.
- Authors
- Sewall, C. J. R., Goldstein, T. R., Wright, A. G. C., & Rosen, D.
- Affiliations
- University of Pittsburgh (US)
- Corresponding author
- Sewall, Craig J. R.
- Venue
- Clinical Psychological Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2022-03-25
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 997-1014
- ISSN
- 2167-7026 (ISSN-L)
- 2167-7034
- PMC
- PMC9671480
- OpenAlex
- W4220797370
- Semantic Scholar
- 5533e20b2e56e737897d652b5efa985eac2f0e19
- Cited by
- 64
- References
- 64
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 20 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 16 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 1
- FWCI
- 17.63
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Locations
- Clinical Psychological Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
- PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- National Institute of Mental Health (T32MH018951)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Impact of Technology on Adolescents
- Social Sciences › Education › Child Development and Digital Technology
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › Digital Media and Philosophy
- Keywords
- smartphone use, social media use, digital technology use, depression, anxiety, social isolation, psychological distress, young adults, within-person effects, objective measurement, sex differences, age differences
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