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Introduction Social media has become a routine setting for self-evaluation, and upward social comparison with perceived better-off others may be associated with psychological maladjustment. However, the average magnitude of this association across outcome domains and the contextual factors that may moderate it remain unclear. Methods This meta-analysis synthesized 94 effect sizes from 54 independent samples ( N = 36,583) using a three-level random-effects framework that modeled dependence among effect sizes within studies. Results The estimated average correlation between upward social comparison and psychological maladjustment was r ¯ = 0.330, 95% CI 0.289, 0.370. Outcome domains differed significantly, QM (4) = 47.84, p 0.001. After reverse-coding positively valenced outcomes, the largest average estimate was observed for social-evaluative negative emotions ( r ¯ = 0.438), followed by anxiety ( r ¯ = 0.382), depression ( r ¯ = 0.306), lower wellbeing ( r ¯ = 0.268), and lower self-esteem ( r ¯ = 0.263). No significant moderating effects were detected for age, cultural background, or data collection year in the outcome-specific models, and exploratory design-based comparisons did not indicate stronger overall effects in longitudinal than in cross-sectional studies. Discussion Online upward social comparison is, on average, associated with multiple indicators of poorer psychological functioning, with particularly strong links to social-evaluative negative emotions. These findings highlight the need for future longitudinal and culturally contextualized research on digital comparison processes.
Lei et al. (Fri,) studied this question.