Does Social Media Use and Adverse Life Events Related to Depression? A Population-based Study Using Negative Binomial Regression

The effect of social media use on users' mental health is a subject of debate, with conflicting evidence in this field. In addition, the prevalence of adverse life events, which is a silent global social issue, is on the rise worldwide. This study aims to examine the effect of social media use and adverse life events on individuals' depression symptoms in Indonesia. A nationally-representative data of 29,793 individuals from the Indonesian Family Life Survey Wave 5 was used. Depression was measured using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) scale. The negative binomial regression was employed to examine the impact of social media use and adverse life event on depression while taking into account the overdispersion nature of count data. The results show that social media use and the frequency of adverse life events experienced by individuals significantly increase the rate of depressive symptoms. The depression rate is higher in females and young age individuals rather than in males and elderlies