Social Media Addiction and Psychological Wellbeing: Associations with Appearance Anxiety, Depression, Stress, and Disordered Eating among Indian Young Adults

The research investigated how social media addiction impacts mental health among 100 young adults from Jaipur India. The participants used standardized tools which included the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS) and Appearance Anxiety Inventory (AAI) and Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21 (DASS-21) and Eating Attitudes Test-26 (EAT-26). Pearson correlation analysis revealed that social media addiction displayed a strong positive relationship with depression (r = .36, p < .001) and stress (r = .35, p < .001) and appearance anxiety (r = .26, p = .008) and disordered eating attitudes (r = .26, p = .010). The regression analysis showed that social media addiction predicted all three outcomes after researchers controlled for participant age and gender. The research results demonstrate that participants with higher social media addiction levels experienced greater psychological health issues in this particular sample. The study limitations include a cross-sectional design which prevents causal relationships to be determined and a sampling method which does not represent the entire population. The findings demonstrate how digital platforms can increase vulnerability to appearance and mood issues among youth in India which Western research literature has not yet investigated.