The mediating and moderating effects of psychological distress on the relationship between social media use with perceived social isolation and sleep quality of late middle-aged and older adults

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Shiraly, R, Yaghooti, F and Griffiths, MD ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8880-6524, 2024. The mediating and moderating effects of psychological distress on the relationship between social media use with perceived social isolation and sleep quality of late middle-aged and older adults. BMC Geriatrics, 24: 655. ISSN 1471-2318

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-024-05252-2

Abstract

Objectives
Older adults are more likely to have poor sleep quality and be socially isolated. The present study examined the potential benefits and disadvantages of social media use (SMU) with respect to sleep quality and perceived social isolation among Iranian late-middle-aged and older adults with focus a on both the mediating and moderating role of psychological distress.

Methods
A population-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 900 older community-dwellers living in Shiraz using a structured questionnaire. Social media use was assessed by estimating the frequency of social networking site visits per week. Data concerning self-rated physical health, chronic medical and mental health conditions, perceived social isolation, sleep quality, and psychological distress were also collected. Multiple linear regression was used to identify independent variables associated with outcomes. Then, mediation and moderation models were used to examine the potential mediating and moderating effects of psychological distress and SMU on their relationships with the study variables.

Results
Higher social media use was associated with better sleep quality and less perceived social isolation. Nevertheless, the relationships between SMU and participants’ sleep quality and perceived social isolation were largely mediated by their level of psychological distress. Furthermore, SMU had a significant moderating effect in the relationship between the psychological distress and the levels of perceived social isolation, so that participants with higher frequency of SMU per week felt less loneliness.

Conclusions
The study findings suggest that SMU has a positive buffering effect regarding late middle-aged and older adults’ mental health mainly through moderation of their perceived social isolation. The mediating role of psychological distress in research examining the relationship between SMU and older adults’ mental health outcomes should be considered in future research.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	BMC Geriatrics
Creators:	Shiraly, R., Yaghooti, F. and Griffiths, M.D.
Publisher:	Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date:	2024
Volume:	24
ISSN:	1471-2318
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1186/s12877-024-05252-2 DOI 2187207 Other
Rights:	© The Author(s) 2024. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Melissa Cornwell
Date Added:	06 Aug 2024 08:37
Last Modified:	06 Aug 2024 08:37
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/51924