Does Social Comparison and Facebook Addiction Lead to Negative Mental Health? A Pilot Study of Emerging Adults Using Structural Equation Modelling

Recent research has observed that among the ever-increasing young users of social networking sites (e.g., Facebook), some present problematic use similar to other behavioral addictions. While regular use of Facebook is not systematically associated with mental health disorders, its addictive use has been consistently associated with higher level of depression and loneliness. Therefore, further research is needed in studying the separate impacts of regular and addictive Facebook use on young adults’ lives. The present study explored the role of Facebook addiction and social comparison on mental health and types of social networking sites (SNSs) usage (i.e., active versus passive usage), hypothesizing that addiction and social comparison will predict negative mental health outcomes and higher SNS usage. The study sample comprised 280 students at a British university. The data were analyzed using structural equation modelling to test for the significance of the relationships between these variables as well as the appropriateness of the overall hypothesised model. Results demonstrated that Facebook addiction significantly predicted depression, loneliness, and both active and passive SNS usage, and social comparison significantly predicted the level of depression significantly. The overall model also demonstrated a good fit which indicates that the hypothesized associations between the variables were strong. It is argued that the association between Facebook addiction and mental health could be a vicious cycle because no causation direction can be excluded. The implications of the study findings and future research directions are also discussed.