Is Social Media Use for Networking Positive or Negative? Offline Social Capital and Internet Addiction as Mediators for the Relationship between Social Media Use and Mental Health

The augmentation and displacement hypotheses generated two mediators for the relationship between social media use and mental health. A representative online sample of 1157 New Zealanders (stratified on age, gender, and region) were measured on social media use for networking, offline social capital, internet addiction, anxiety, and depression. Results showed that social media use for networking's relationship with anxiety and depression was mediated by both offline social capital and internet addiction. Anxiety and depression were lower when mediated by offline social capital, and higher when mediated by internet addiction. Applied to everyday social life, this suggests that when someone uses social media to build on pre-existing offline social capital, their mental health is "augmented". However, if their online social connections are unrelated to their offline social capital, this might be associated with an internet addiction where their offline social life is "displaced" by over-reliance on brittle online connections.