Social media use and its impact on adolescent mental health: An umbrella review of the evidence
Valkenburg PM, Meier A, Beyens I
Current opinion in psychology · 314 citations
How it was studied
- Design
- Systematic review (indexed by PubMed)
- Studied in
- People
- Main outcome
- Health markers and function
Who paid for it
- Funding
- Independent funding
- University or hospital
- University of Oxford
- Government
- Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek
- Government
- Dutch Research Council (NWO)
Based on 3 listed funder(s).
Publication
- Published
- 2021-08-18 · Curr Opin Psychol · vol. 44 · pp. 58–68
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Cited
- 759 citations · more than 100% of similar papers · 21.7× the field average
- Impact
- Top 10% most cited in its field
- References
- 61 works
- Access
- Open access (hybrid journal) · CC-BY
- Research areas
- Impact of Technology on Adolescents · Child Development and Digital Technology · Digital Mental Health Interventions
- Keywords
- social media use, adolescent mental health, umbrella review, evidence synthesis, research gaps
- MeSH
- humans, mental health, adolescent, review literature as topic, meta-analysis as topic, social media, social networking
3 authors
From NL, DE
- Patti M. Valkenburg · correspondingUniversity of Amsterdam
- Adrian MeierFriedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
- Ine BeyensUniversity of Amsterdam
Abstract
Literature reviews on how social media use affects adolescent mental health have accumulated at an unprecedented rate of late. Yet, a higher-level integration of the evidence is still lacking. We fill this gap with an up-to-date umbrella review, a review of reviews published between 2019 and mid-2021. Our search yielded 25 reviews: seven meta-analyses, nine systematic, and nine narrative reviews. Results showed that most reviews interpreted the associations between social media use and mental health as 'weak' or 'inconsistent,' whereas a few qualified the same associations as 'substantial' and 'deleterious.' We summarize the gaps identified in the reviews, provide an explanation for their diverging interpretations, and suggest several avenues for future research.
Abstract via Europe PMC. Copyright remains with the authors or publisher (CC BY).
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