Social Media Use, Physical Activity, and Internalizing Symptoms in Adolescence: Cross-sectional Analysis
Authors: Rutter Lauren A , Thompson Holly M , Howard Jacqueline , Riley Tennisha N , De Jesús-Romero Robinson , Lorenzo-Luaces Lorenzo 
Published: April 2021

Background

Most American adolescents have access to smartphones, and recent estimates suggest that they spend considerable time on social media compared with other physical and leisure activities. A large body of literature has established that social media use is related to poor mental health, but the complicated relationship between social media and symptoms of depression and anxiety in adolescents is yet to be fully understood.

Objective

We aim to investigate the relationship between social media use and depression and anxiety symptoms in adolescents by exploring physical activity as a mediator.

Methods

A Qualtrics survey manager recruited adult panel participants between February and March 2019, who indicated that they had adolescent children who spoke English. A total of 4592 adolescent-parent dyads completed the survey that took approximately 39 minutes. The survey entailed completing web-based questionnaires assessing various aspects of social media use, psychological symptoms, and psychosocial factors. The average age of the adolescent participants was 14.62 (SD 1.68; range 12-17) years, and the majority of the adolescent sample was male (2392/4592, 52.09%).

Results

Total social media use was associated with more depressive symptoms (multiple R2=0.12; F3,4480=207.1; P<.001), anxiety (multiple R2=0.09; F3,4477=145.6; P<.001), and loneliness (multiple R2=0.06; F3,4512=98.06; P<.001), controlling for age and gender. Physical activity was associated with decreased depression and anxiety symptoms after controlling for other extracurricular activities and social media use (multiple R2=0.24; F5,4290=266.0; P<.001). There were significant differences in symptoms based on gender: female adolescents reported higher rates of social media use and males reported higher rates of depression. Nonbinary and transgender adolescents had higher rates of depression, anxiety, and loneliness than the female and male adolescents in the sample.

Conclusions

In a nationally representative sample of adolescents, more social media use was associated with more severe symptoms of depression, anxiety, and loneliness. Increased physical activity was associated with decreased depression and anxiety symptoms. Physical activity partially mediated the relationship between social media use and depression and anxiety. As this was a cross-sectional study, we cannot conclude that social media use causes internalizing symptoms or that physical activity leads to decreased internalizing symptoms—there may be additional confounding variables producing the relationships we observed. Physical activity may protect against the potentially harmful effect of social media on some adolescents. The effect sizes were small to medium, and the results should be interpreted with caution. Other limitations of this study include our reliance on self-reporting. Future work should examine social media use beyond how much time adolescents spend using social media and instead focus on the nature of social media activity.