Prevalence, motivation, psychological distress, and gender differences of problematic social media use among Chinese college students

Problematic social media use (PSMU) presents a substantial public health concern due to its pervasive negative impacts. While psychological distress and specific social media use motives have been implicated as risk factors, prevalence rates and the nuanced role of gender have shown inconsistent findings globally. Crucially, these complex interrelationships between PSMU, use motives (i.e., coping, conformity, enhancement, and social), distress symptoms, and gender differences remain largely underexplored in Chinese college student populations. To address this, our anonymous, web-based, cross-sectional study recruited 788 Chinese college students (mean age = 20.92 ± 2.74 years, 23.52 % male) to examine PSMU prevalence and its associations with the aforementioned factors. We found that 26.6 % of participants met criteria for PSMU. Multiple regression analysis demonstrated that more severe PSMU was significantly associated with higher daily active and passive social media engagement, as well as elevated coping, conformity, and enhancement motives, and increased stress symptoms. Moreover, greater social media use for enhancement purposes was linked to PSMU only in women. These findings highlight coping motives, conformity motives, gender-specific enhancement motives, and psychological distress as potential critical influencing factors for PSMU, offering actionable targets for interventions.