United States adults' social media use and digital emotion regulation in everyday life: The potential of social media to be harnessed for mental health

Abstract

Despite common knowledge that adults regularly engage in social media use (SMU), research has not yet described basic characteristics of their SMU, such as frequency, time spent, and SMU to impact emotions (i.e., digital emotion regulation [ER]). Further, research has not examined how these real-time features of adults' SMU relate to wellbeing. Adults (N = 179; M_age = 35.3; SD_age = 12.26) residing in the United States received five daily surveys for 14 days, reporting how much they engaged in SMU, if they had digital ER goals, and momentary affect. They reported depression at a laboratory session. Participants indicated SMU almost 50 % of surveys for 1–15 min on average and digital ER goals almost 40 % of the time. Increasing age was associated with less SMU and fewer digital ER goals. Women and men engaged in similar amounts of SMU, but men reported more ER goals. Participants engaged in more SMU and had more ER goals in moments they felt worse and with increasing depression. These findings characterize how adults engage in SMU from young- to middle-adulthood. Although future research should clarify directionality, findings suggest SMU is an ER tool for adults that is relied upon more when wellbeing is lower.