RT Journal Article
T1 When social media hurts: a nine-month prospective study on self- blame as a mediator between problematic social media use and suicidal ideation in adolescents
A1 Quintana-Orts, Cirenia
A1 Yudes-Gómez, Carolina
A1 Sánchez-Moreno, Víctor
A1 Rey-Peña, Lourdes
K1 Adolescentes-Redes sociales
K1 Redes sociales en Internet
K1 Suicidio
AB The increasing prevalence of problematic social media use (PSMU) has heightened concerns about its adverse impact onsocial media users’ mental health, and specifically on suicidality. Despite reviews investigating the associations betweenPSMU, emotion regulation, and suicidality, there is a lack of understanding of the potential role that specific emotionregulation might play. This study aimed to bridge this gap by examining the mediating role of four specific maladaptivecognitive emotion regulation strategies (CERS) (i.e., rumination, self-blame, other-blame, catastrophizing) in the prospectivelink between PSMU and suicidal ideation in a sample of 517 adolescents (M = 13.41, SD = 1.06). The results showedthat PSMU was significantly associated with suicidal ideation nine months after its assessment. Maladaptive CERS werenegatively associated with both PSMU and suicidal ideation, with the exception of other-blame, which was not significantlyrelated to PSMU. The findings of mediation analyses indicated that only self-blame mediates the negative and prospectivelink between PSMU and suicidal ideation. Specifically, those adolescents who present PSMU were found to exhibit a higherlevel of self-blame, which, in turn, contributed to greater suicidal ideation nine months later. These findings reinforce thenotion that not only might PSMU be a risk factor for suicide in adolescence, but also that efforts should focus on identifyingsuch adolescents and on helping them to reduce self-blame. The implications of this study for the prevention of suicidalideation associated with PSMU in adolescents are discussed.
PB Springer
YR 2026
FD 2026-03-30
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10630/46241
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10630/46241
LA eng
NO Quintana-Orts, C., Yudes, C., Sánchez-Moreno, V. et al. When social media hurts: a nine-month prospective study on self-blame as a mediator between problematic social media use and suicidal ideation in adolescents. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-026-03015-5
NO Funding for open access charge: Universidad de Málaga / CBUA
DS RIUMA. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Málaga
RD 9 abr 2026