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We examined the predictive relations of social media and smartphone use to body esteem in female adolescents and the mechanism that underlies these relations. As a result of frequent social media and smartphone use, adolescents are continually exposed to appearance-related media content. This likely reinforces a thin ideal and fosters appearance-based comparison and increases fear of external evaluation. Hence, we investigated a cognitive-affective framework in which the associations of social media and smartphone use with body esteem are serially mediated by cognitive internalization of an ideal body image, appearance comparisons, and social appearance anxiety. By testing female adolescents (N = 100) aged 13 to 18, we found that excessive social media use leads to unhealthy body esteem via intensified cognitive internalization, which aggravates appearance comparisons and anxiety regarding negative appearance evaluation. Further, we found that screen time for specific smartphone activities also harmed body esteem, independent of social media use. However, overall smartphone screen time did not affect body esteem when social media use was taken into consideration. Our findings underscore the multifactor mechanism that elucidates the negative impacts of social media and smartphone activities on body esteem in female adolescents, who are developmentally susceptible to poor body esteem.

While the rapid growth of mobile mental health applications has offered an avenue of support unbridled by physical distance, time, and cost, the digitalization of traditional interventions has also triggered doubts surrounding their effectiveness and safety. Given the need for a more comprehensive and up-to-date understanding of mobile mental health apps in traditional treatment, this umbrella review provides a holistic summary of their key potential and pitfalls. A total of 36 reviews published between 2014 and 2022—including systematic reviews, meta-analyses, scoping reviews, and literature reviews—were identified from the Cochrane library, Medline (via PubMed Central), and Scopus databases. The majority of results supported the key potential of apps in helping to (1) provide timely support, (2) ease the costs of mental healthcare, (3) combat stigma in help-seeking, and (4) enhance therapeutic outcomes. Our results also identified common themes of apps’ pitfalls (i.e., challenges faced by app users), including (1) user engagement issues, (2) safety issues in emergencies, (3) privacy and confidentiality breaches, and (4) the utilization of non-evidence-based approaches. We synthesize the potential and pitfalls of mental health apps provided by the reviews and outline critical avenues for future research.

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Given that crucial psychological attributes of smartphone addiction have been studied in isolation from each other, we examined latent profiles of emotional distress (depression, stress, loneliness, and fear of missing out; i.e., FoMO); protective traits (self-control, mindfulness, grit); the behavioral inhibition system (BIS) and approach system (BAS; drive, reward responsiveness, and fun seeking) in relation to addictive smartphone use. We identified three distinctive profiles, using five fit statistics: AIC, BIC, adjusted BIC, an entropy, and LRT. The self-controlled, gritty, and mindful profile (22.7%) was characterized by heightened levels of self-control, grit, and mindfulness but lower levels of emotional distress, BIS, and BAS. The emotionally distressed profile (29.8%) was distinguished by elevated levels of depression, stress, loneliness, FoMO, and BIS, but relatively lower protective traits and BAS. Lastly, the approach sensitive profile (47.5%) corresponded to the normative group characterized by relatively higher BAS but mostly average levels of emotional distress and protective traits. When both global and pairwise comparisons between profiles were performed using Wald tests, we found that the self-controlled, gritty, and mindful profile was associated with significantly lower smartphone addiction tendencies than emotionally distressed or approach sensitive profiles, while the latter two did not differ from each other. These results still held when multiple covariates (age, sex, and income) were controlled for. Using a sophisticated person-centered approach, our findings underscore multidimensional psychological profiles that have different associations with smartphone addiction.