Social Media Use and Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Meta-Analysis of 14 Cross-Sectional Studies

Abstract Background: Public isolated due to the early quarantine regarding coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) increasingly used more social media platforms. Contradictory claims regarding the effect of social media use on mental health needs to be resolved. We aimed to summarise the association between the time spent on social media platform during the COVID-19 quarantine and mental health outcomes (i.e., anxiety and depression). Methods: We searched 327 studies from the PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Library databases. These studies evaluated the association between use of social media platform and mental health outcomes, including anxiety and depression, ascertained by various screening tools. We summarised the final 14 studies in terms of the odds ratios (ORs). Data analyses included a random-effect model and an assessment of inter-study heterogeneity. This meta-analysis review was registered in PROSPERO (https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/, registration No CRD42021260223, 15 June 2021). Results: In studies regarding anxiety, overall studies had a pooled OR of 1.55 (95% CI: 1.30–1.85; OR that would be categorized as having anxiety when increasing from "less" to "frequent") and mild inter-study heterogeneity (I2 = 26.77%). In studies regarding depression, overall studies had a pooled OR of 1.43 (95% CI: 1.14–1.80; OR that would be categorized as having depression when increasing from "less" to "frequent") and moderate heterogeneity (I2 = 67.16%). Conclusions: Our analysis demonstrated that the excessive time spent on social media platform was associated with a greater likelihood of having symptoms of anxiety and depression.