Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Mental Health
Date Submitted: Aug 14, 2020
Date Accepted: Nov 3, 2020
Exploring the association between sexual minority identity and depression through the mediating effect of negative social media experiences: A national survey of U.S. young adults
ABSTRACT
Background:
Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) persons are disproportionately affected by depression and have high social media (SM) use rates. Negative SM experiences might modify depressive symptoms among LGB persons.
Objective:
We sought to assess the potential influence of negative SM experiences on the association between LGB identity and depression.
Methods:
Online survey of a national sample of U.S. young adults ages 18-30. We assessed LGB identity, negative SM experiences, and depression using the 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire. We used generalized structural equation modeling to assess both the direct and indirect (via negative SM experiences) effects of LGB identity on depression while controlling for relevant demographic and personal characteristics.
Results:
We found a conditional indirect effect (ab path) of LGB identity on depressive symptoms via negative SM experience (a = observed coefficient: 0.229; p<0.001; bias-corrected bootstrapped 95% C.I. 0.162 – 0.319, and b = observed coefficient: 2.158; p<0.001; bias-corrected bootstrapped 95% C.I. 1.840 – 2.494). Results show that among LGB respondents, and for those who reported negative SM experiences in the past year, a 1 unit increase in these experiences associated with a 0.494 unit increase in depressive symptomatology.
Conclusions:
Results suggest that higher rates of depression among LGB young adults are partially explained by negative SM experiences will help inform future patient/provider conversations about mental health risk and protective factors related to SM use. Reducing these experiences among LGB persons might mitigate depressive symptomatology in this population.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.