Abstract
BackgroundIn Lebanon, it is already established that mental disorders are prevalent among the population. Lebanese people are active users of social media platforms. To date, no study has previously explored the relationship between mental health and social media use disorder in Lebanon. The present study aims to learn more about the link between social media use disorder and loneliness among Lebanese people.MethodsThis cross-sectional study was carried out between January and December 2018. It enrolled 456 residents of the community randomly selected from Lebanon’s governorates in a proportionate rate.ResultsThe results showed that 107 (23.7%) participants were classified as having social media use disorder. The results of a stepwise linear regression, taking the loneliness score as the dependent variable, showed that female gender compared to males (Beta = 0.42), having a secondary level of education compared to illiteracy (Beta = 0.65), higher social media use disorder (Beta = 0.03) and higher insomnia (Beta = 0.02) and alexithymia (Beta = 0.02) were significantly associated with higher loneliness.ConclusionThe present study was able to contribute to the literature and showed the association between social media use disorder and loneliness. These findings can benefit psychologists and public health practitioners in their future prevention and intervention plans.
Highlights
In Lebanon, it is already established that mental disorders are prevalent among the population
Minimal sample size calculation The G-power program was used to calculate the minimum sample size needed for our study, with an acceptable 5% margin of error, a power of 90% and an expected medium effect size (r = 0.3) of social media use on loneliness in the absence of previous Lebanese studies, the results indicated that we need 109 participants to participate in the study
The results showed that the mean age of the participants was 27.29 ± 11.46 years and the mean number of hours spent on social media was 6.22 ± 4.92
Summary
In Lebanon, it is already established that mental disorders are prevalent among the population. No study has previously explored the relationship between mental health and social media use disorder in Lebanon. Social media use is defined as electronically interacting with others through specific platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter [1]. These platforms have become incredibly popular among youth and younger adults and have played a huge role in their developmental process and. Some assessment tools are focusing on one specific social media platform and disregarding others. This in turn is resulting in the lack of availability of reliable and unified information on social media use disorder [6]
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