Social Media Usage Patterns, Mental Health, and Academic Outcomes Among Global Students: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Social media use is ubiquitous among college students and is now the subject of study (and critique) for its influence on sleep, psychological well-being, academic success, and mental health, but the majority of the evidence base is from samples within individual countries. This cross-sectional study analyzed a publicly available secondary dataset of 5,000 students aged 18–24 years (M = 20.82, SD = 1.74; 52.7% male) reported to span more than 20 countries, and examined the average daily social media use, daily unlocking of smartphones, study hours, physical activity, sleep duration, stress level, and a composite mental health score (1–10). Mean daily social media use was 5.08 hours (SD = 1.65) and mean daily unlocks were 171.45 (SD = 42.86). Daily usage (r = −0.816, p < .001) and unlocks (r = −0.791, p < .001) were highly correlated with mental health, with a strong negative correlation observed. On the other hand, sleep duration (r = 0.766) and study hours (r = 0.753) were highly correlated with mental health and showed a strong positive correlation. A multiple linear regression model explained 70.3% of the variance in mental health scores (R² = 0.703). Compared to all other age groups, the high-school students had the lowest mental health scores (M = 5.86) and highest usage (M = 5.43 h), with both differences statistically significant across academic level, F(2, 4997) = 26.02, p < .001 for mental health score and F(2, 4997) = 13.40, p < .001 for usage hours, though these academic-level effects were small in magnitude (η² = .010 and .005, respectively). Stress level separately showed a clear dose–response pattern, F(3, 4996) = 2685.02, p < .001. In conclusion, higher social media use was significantly associated with lower mental health scores, less sleep and study time, and higher stress, whereas purpose-driven use (education or networking) was associated with modestly better scores than entertainment use. Because the design is cross-sectional and observational, these associations cannot establish causal direction, but they highlight the potential value of targeted interventions within educational institutions for digital literacy, sleep hygiene and establishing boundaries on technology use.