Symptom linkages between social media addiction and multidimensional stressors across adolescence and young adulthood

Background Social media addiction (SMA) is increasingly prevalent among adolescents and may persist into emerging and young adulthood. Prior studies have reported the prevalence of SMA across different age groups, with limited attention to its symptom-level structure and associations with multiple stressors within each group. This study applied network analysis to identify the central symptoms and strongest edges in SMA networks, and the bridge stressors and their connections with SMA symptoms across three age groups. Methods A total of 1,472 young people ( M age = 25.12 years, SD = 6.96; 49.7% female) were recruited via a mobile survey in Hong Kong in 2024. SMA networks and SMA–stressor bridge networks were estimated separately for adolescents aged 11–17 years ( n = 250), emerging adults aged 18–24 years ( n = 376), and young adults aged 25–35 years ( n = 846). Networks were compared across age groups using network comparison tests. Results Across all three age groups, Tolerance was the most central symptom, and the Tolerance–Salience edge was the strongest edge in the SMA network. In the bridge network, Academic Stress showed the highest bridge expected influence among stressors in adolescents and was linked with Withdrawal and Relapse . In emerging and young adults, bridging edges were distributed across stressor domains. Network comparison tests detected no significant differences in global network structure or global strength across age groups in either network. Exploratory comparisons found that the bridging role of Academic Stress was stronger in adolescents than in the two adult groups. Conclusion The core structure of the SMA network was consistent across the three age groups, whereas the bridge role of Academic Stress was specific to adolescents. The findings identify both the core and bridge symptoms of SMA linking to stressors as potential targets for preventive intervention.