Examining associations between social media use, depression, global health, and sleep disturbance among emerging adults

Abstract

In recent years, social media use and its effects on mental health have been investigated many times. Mostly, studies focused less on the global health when addressing mental health. In this cluster analysis study, on a sample of 261 Turkish college students who were emerging adults, the associations between social media use and depression, sleep disturbance, and global health were tested. By using k-means cluster analysis, participants were divided into three groups: ordinary and none, mild, and severe social media users. The results indicated that male college students had higher social networking addiction than females. There was a significant and positive relationship between time spent on social media and depression and sleep disturbance. The results showed that mild level social media users differ statistically in global health and sleep disturbance from both ordinary/none and severe users. The results were similar with the previous published studies in different cultures and countries in the fields of mental health.

Keywords

• social media use
• global health
• depression
• sleep disturbance
• cluster analysis