Depression and social media addiction among teenagers in a longitudinal study with dual moderation

Depression has been consistently associated with social media addiction, yet the psychological processes underlying this relationship remain insufficiently understood. The present study aimed to examine the longitudinal association between depression and social media addiction among teenagers, with particular attention to the potential moderating roles of difficulty describing feelings and experiential avoidance. A three-wave longitudinal study was conducted with 3,184 teenagers from China. Participants completed self-report measures assessing depression, social media addiction, difficulty describing feelings, and experiential avoidance. Descriptive statistics, correlation analyses, and moderated regression models were used to examine the proposed longitudinal associations. Depression at Time 1 (T1) was positively associated with social media addiction at Time 3 (T3). In addition, difficulty describing feelings and experiential avoidance at Time 2 (T2) significantly moderated the association between T1 depression and T3 social media addiction. Teenagers who experienced greater difficulty describing their feelings or who tended to avoid unpleasant internal experiences appeared more vulnerable to the longitudinal association between depression and social media addiction. These findings highlight the importance of emotional understanding and regulation capacities in shaping patterns of social media use among adolescents and offer implications for theory development as well as targeted prevention and intervention efforts.