Is Social Media Use Related to Social Anxiety? A Meta-Analysis

During face-to-face interactions, social anxiety involves an intense fear which precipitates impaired communication and avoidance. Social media provides an alternate, potentially less anxiety-provoking communication venue. The relationship between social anxiety and social media is unclear. Prior reviews focused on the relationship between one of these terms (i.e. social anxiety or social media use) and a broader category (i.e. psychological well-being, computer-mediated communication). These earlier reviews found inconclusive results perhaps due to the paucity of studies available that examined the specific relationship between social anxiety and social media use. Given an uptick in research on this specific relationship in the past five years, the current study synthesized and analyzed 27 independent study samples that met inclusion criteria (Total N = 38,163). Using a random-effects model, we found a significant positive relationship between social media use and social anxiety (r = .14). Moderation analyses indicated smaller positive effect sizes for studies with adolescent-only samples, White-majority samples, North American samples, and less reliable measures of social media use. Since social media may provide affordances and risks that depend on each mental health challenge, we need more social media usage studies and reviews with results specified by challenge.