Computers in Human Behavior Reports 4 (2021) 100122

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Computers in Human Behavior Reports

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The impact of social media use types and social media addiction on
subjective well-being of college students: A comparative analysis of
addicted and non-addicted students
Lei Zhao a, b, *
a
School of Management, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, Anhui, China
b
Wendian College, Anhui University, Hefei, Anhui, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The purpose of this study was to explore the influence of different types of social media use on social media
Use types addiction and subjective well-being, and the relationship between social media addiction and subjective well-
Social media addiction being. Using random sampling, we collected a sample of 370 Chinese college students. According to the
Subjective well-being
scores of social media addiction scale, the respondents were divided into addicted group and non-addicted group.
College students
On the basis of literature review, a research model was constructed, which was verified by using the data of total
students, addicted students and non-addicted students. The results show that social use and entertainment use
have different effects on social media addiction and subjective well-being: entertainment use is more likely to
lead to social media addiction, and social use tends to improve subjective well-being. Furthermore, social media
addiction has a negative impact on subjective well-being, which is supported in the validation of all three groups.

1. Introduction
Social media is an umbrella term consisting of social networking sites
and messenger platforms (Wartberg et al., 2020). With the development
of mobile Internet technology and the popularity of smart phones, social
media has become an important part of the daily learning and life of
college students. In 2017, there were about 2.46 billion social media
users worldwide, and it is expected to increase to about 3.09 billion by
the end of 2021(Statista, 2020).
In China, social media is widely used in almost all aspects of college
students’ life, including communication, education, entertainment, in­
formation seeking, decision-making, mobile payment, etc., and the
number of social media users has exceeded 1 billion, and more than 60%
of them are young people (15–29 years old) (China Internet Network
Information Center, 2020). The local social media of China represented
by WeChat not only has functions such as instant messaging, enter­
tainment, and information sharing, but also mobile payment functions
(Pang, 2018a). If college students don’t use social media, their study and
life will be very inconvenient, such as they can’t get the course infor­
mation in time, learn the latest information, and even can’t pay in the
shopping mall. Additionally, since 2020, under the influence of
COVID-19 pandemic, the teaching methods of many courses and lectures
in Chinese universities have changed from offline to online, and social
media is an important platform for teachers to conduct online teaching
and answer questions, which greatly increases the time college students
spend on social media.
Nowadays, social media use has been operationalized as a formative
construct to investigate its impact on college students’ subjective well-
being (Chandani et al., 2018; Guo et al., 2013; Kim et al., 2020).
Considering that people usually use more than one social media product
at the same time, we study social media as an umbrella construct to
better understand the relationship between social media use and sub­
jective well-being. Scholars generally believe that the use of social media
can have a positive impact on college students (Guo et al., 2013; Wang
et al., 2014; Yang & Lee, 2018). For example, some researches pointed
out that social media could help college students accumulate social
capital (Pang, 2018a), reduce their loneliness (Phu & Gow, 2019) and
improve their subjective well-being (Kim et al., 2020). However, some
studies have claimed that if college students use social media too often,
they may develop social media addiction, which will affect their phys­
ical and mental health (Andreassen et al., 2017; Marino, Gini, Vieno, &
Spada, 2018). Other studies even suggested that there is a
non-significant relationship between social media use and subjective
well-being (Lee et al., 2011; Utz & Breuer, 2017; Phu & Gow., 2019).

* Wendian College, Anhui University, Hefei, Anhui, China

E-mail address: zhaolei129@126.com.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbr.2021.100122
Received 13 March 2021; Received in revised form 11 July 2021; Accepted 14 July 2021
Available online 15 July 2021
2451-9588/© 2021 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
L. Zhao
Based on the main functions of serving users, social media use can be
divided into two types: social use (communication and interaction, up­
date status, comment, etc.) and entertainment use (playing games,
listening to music, browsing the web, etc.) (Wang et al., 2014). This
inconsistency may be due to the different types of social media used by
college students, and different types of use may have different effects on
subjective well-being. In addition, there may be differences in the
perception of subjective well-being between addicted and non-addicted
users. However, there are few empirical studies to verify these views. To
fill these research gaps, we constructed a research model to explore the
different effects of social use and entertainment use on subjective
well-being, and the relationship between social media addiction and
subjective well-being as well. Furthermore, we divided 370 Chinese
participants into addicted students and non-addicted students according
to the level of addiction, and used the total students’ data, addicted
students’ data and non-addicted students’ data to validate the research
model and analyze the differences of different groups, which could
extend the current literature in this field.
2. Literature review and hypothesis development
2.1. Social media use and addiction
The term addiction is mainly related to alcohol, drugs and gambling
(Nayak, 2018). However, with the increasing use of computers and the
Internet, technology addiction has become a social problem since the
mid-1990s (Shaw & Black, 2008). In recent decades, Internet addiction
has attracted the attention of academia, which refers to the obvious
social and psychological damage caused by excessive use of the Internet,
and brings serious harm to users’ physical and mental health (Jie et al.,
2014; Shaw & Black, 2008). At present, social media use has become an
important part of college students’ Internet use. Psychological research
points out that if individuals overuse social media and cannot control
their activities on social media, they are considered to have symptoms of
social media addiction (Kimberly, 2009; Tang et al., 2016). Ryan et al.
(2014) argued that using social media can bring satisfaction to users,
which is the main reason for the addiction disorder developed on social
media. Due to the diversity of social media functions, users may be
addicted to social activities, such as posting, sharing content, or other
activities, such as playing games (Griffths et al., 2014).
Some studies have pointed out that college students are more likely
to become addicted as the intensity of social media use increases
(Błachnio et al., 2016; Brailovskaia et al., 2018). For example, Busalim
et al. (2019) indicated that higher the frequency of social media use, the
more likely college students are to become addicted to it. In other words,
the use intensity of social media is closely related to college students’
social media addiction. Compared with non-addicted users, addicted
users spend more time on social media (Hormes et al., 2014). The results
of a meta-analysis indicated that the time spent online is considered a
component of problematic social media use, and the more time spent
online is indicative of potential addiction (Marino et al., 2018). Gener­
ally, according to the function of service users, the types of social media
use can be divided into social use and entertainment use (Wang et al.,
2014). Whether it is social use or entertainment use, users need to spend
a lot of time on social media, which may lead to social media addiction.
Based on this, the following hypotheses are proposed:
H1. Social use has a positive effect on college students’ social media
addiction
H2. Entertainment use has a positive effect on college students’ social
media addiction
2.2. Social media use and subjective well-being
Subjective well-being usually refers to an individual’s overall
perception and evaluation of his or her own living conditions or specific
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Computers in Human Behavior Reports 4 (2021) 100122
areas of life (Felce, 2010; Pang, 2018a). As a multi-factorial construct,
subjective well-being mainly includes cognitive judgment of overall life
satisfaction and emotional assessment of emotions and feelings (Chan,
2013, pp. 96–113; Goswami, 2012). Due to these different dimensions of
the concept (ie, life satisfaction, positive emotions, and negative emo­
tions) reflect a person’s subjective view of life experience, well-being is
often defined as subjective well-being.
Many studies have focused on the social use of various social media
services, and the results show that social use has a positive impact on
users’ subjective well-being (Chen & Li, 2017; Pang, 2018a; Wang et al.,
2014). For example, Guo et al. (2013) has confirmed that the social use
of social media could enhance users’ perceived bridging social capital
and subjective well-being. In a recent study, Kim et al. (2020) demon­
strated that college students communicate with a wide range of people
on social networks, which is positively related to their subjective
well-being.
Social media can promote interactions with strong and weak social
relationships, so that users feel that they have received care or attention,
and get the necessary resources and support from them (Chen & Li,
2017; Johnston et al., 2013). Therefore, social media use for social
purposes helps to promote social connections and has a positive impact
on personal life (Guo et al., 2013). On the contrary, the relationship
between social media use and personal happiness may become
extremely weak or irrelevant when using social media for personal
entertainment and recreation purposes, such as playing games or
browsing online content (Pang, 2018b; Burke & Kraut, 2016). Chandani
et al. (2019) pointed out that college students’ use of WhatsApp for
gaming purposes has a negative impact on their physical well-being.
Additionally, if users are addicted to the game, it may have a negative
impact on their subjective well-being (Reer et al., 2019, pp. 1–20;
Sampasa-Kanyinga & Lewis, 2015). Hence, two hypotheses are put
forward:
H3. Social use has a positive effect on college students’ subjective well-
being
H4. Entertainment use has a negative effect on college students’ sub­
jective well-being
2.3. Social media addiction and subjective well-being
Some studies asserted that social media addiction may lead to some
difficulties in college students’ emotion regulation (Andreassen & Pal­
lesen, 2014; Hormes et al., 2014). In the empowerment enslavement
paradox, McDaniel (2015) pointed out that high-tech smartphones have
many advantages, such as all-weather connection, but this unlimited
availability may mean that individuals become “slaves” of smartphones.
Social media addiction means that college students spend a lot of time on
social media and ignore people and things around them, which affect
their physical and mental health, and reduce their subjective well-being
(Błachnio et al., 2016; Coyne et al., 2019). A meta-analysis of 70 primary
studies shows that students with internet addiction have more negative
emotions and less subjective well-being (Lei et al., 2019). Recently, Ko
and Turan’s (2020) empirical research indicates that social media
addiction is negatively associated with college students’ subjective
well-being. Following these studies, this hypothesis is proposed:
H5. Social media addiction has a negative impact on college students’
subjective well-being
3. Research methodology
3.1. Research model
Based on the above analysis, a research model was constructed
(Fig. 1).
L. Zhao Computers in Human Behavior Reports 4 (2021) 100122

Fig. 1. The research model.

3.2. Measures 30000 students in this university, with complete disciplines and spe­
cialties, and the gender ratio of male and female students is relatively
3.2.1. Social use coordinated, which can provide ideal samples for research. The strati­
The Social Use Scale referred to the research of Chang and Zhu fied sampling method was adopted to ensure that an appropriate num­
(2011), including three items: “I can make new friends through social ber of samples could be obtained from both undergraduate and graduate
media,” “I can find old friends through social media,” and “I can keep in groups. We distributed a total of 400 printed questionnaires, and all
touch with my friends through social media.” A 5-point Likert scale was participants were given a gift, such as bookmark, pen, etc., which was
utilized, which ranges from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). worth about $2. This study is supported by the Humanities and Social
Science Project of Anhui Provincial Education Department. Excluding
3.2.2. Entertainment use questionnaires with incomplete information, we obtained 370 valid
The Entertainment Use Scale came from the research of Guo et al. questionnaires. The demographic characteristics of the sample are
(2013) and Pang (2018b), which had three items in total. These state­ shown in Table 1.
ments consisted of “I can use social media is to enjoy fun and enter­ The total sample (n = 370) included 162 boys (43.9%) and 208 girls
tainment,” “I can use social media is just to look at what happened with (56.1%). After screening the data, we divided the sample into: 224
the people around me,” and “I can use social media is to spend time addicted students (60.5%), at least six items on the social media
online.” These three items were measured using a 5-point Likert scale. addiction scale scored 3 or more, and 146 non-addicted students
(39.5%).
3.2.3. Social media addiction
The Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale was used in the study 4. Data analysis
(Andreassen et al., 2012), which had eighteen items, such as “Spent a lot
of time thinking about social or planned use of social media?”, “Felt an In this section, SPSS22.0 was used for the assessment of common
urge to use social media more and more?” and “Tried to cut down on the method biases, descriptive analysis and correlation analysis, and
use of social media without success?”. The response used the 5-point SmartPLS 3.2.8 was used to evaluate the measurement properties and
Likert scale. In the measurement, at least 6 items scored 3 or more test hypotheses.
were considered to have addiction symptoms.
4.1. Assessment of common method biases
3.2.4. Subjective well-being
We used the Subjective Well-being Scale developed by Lyubomirsky Harman’s single-factor test was used to assess the common method
and Lepper (1999), which included four items (e.g. ‘In general, I bias. A single factor accounted for 32.7% of the variance, which is below
consider myself’, ‘compared to most of my peers I consider myself’) the critical value of 40% (Podsakoff et al., 2003), indicating that there is
where each item was presented on a 5-point Likert scale (e.g. ‘1 = not a no serious common method biases in the present study.
very happy person; 5 = a very happy person’). The possible total scores
can range from 4 to 20, with 20 being the highest level of well-being. Table 1
Sample demographics (N = 370).
3.2.5. Control variables
Category Number (%)
Previous studies have shown that social media use and subjective
Total (N = 370) Addicted (N = Non-addicted (N =
well-being are related to social media users’ gender, age and education
224) 146)
level (Pang, 2018a; Phu & Gow, 2019). Based on this, the study takes
these demographic variables as control variables. Gender
Male 162 (43.9%) 95 (42.4%) 63 (43.2%)
Female 208 (56.1%) 129 (57.6%) 83 (56.8%)
Age
3.3. Data collection
17–20 years 129 (34.9%) 98 (43.8%) 31 (21.2%)
21–24 years 201 (54.3%) 104 (46.4%) 97 (66.4%)
From October to November in 2020, through random sampling, we ≥25 years 40 (10.8%) 22 (9.8%) 18 (12.4%)
issued the questionnaire at a comprehensive university in Anhui Prov­ Education level
ince, China. All study procedures were approved by the Institutional Undergraduate 243 (65.7%) 152 (67.8%) 91 (62.3%)
Postgraduate 127 (34.3%) 72 (32.2%) 55 (37.7%)
Review Board at this University in October 2020. There are nearly

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L. Zhao Computers in Human Behavior Reports 4 (2021) 100122

4.2. Descriptive analysis addiction is significant (β = 0.150, p < .05), and H2 is supported. Social
use has a significant positive effect on subjective well-being of college
Table 2 presents the descriptive statistics of the three groups. It can students (β = 0.202, p < .05), and social media addiction has a signifi­
be seen that addicted students have higher scores on social use, enter­ cant negative effect on subjective well-being (β = − 0.387, p < .001), H3
tainment use and social media addiction than non-addicted students, and H5 are supported. In addition, the impact coefficient of entertain­
while non-addicted students score higher on subjective well-being than ment use on college students’ subjective well-being is not significant (β
addicted students. = 0.024, p > .05), and H4 cannot get support.
In the test of addicted students, H1 (β = 0.436, p < .001), H2 (β =
4.3. Reliability and validity test 0.135, p < .05) and H5 (β = − 0.270, p < .05) are supported, and the
other two hypotheses are not true. This shows that among social media
First, Cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability (CR) and average addicted students, respondents agree that excessive use of social media
variance extracted (AVE) were calculated to verify the reliability of the will lead to symptoms of addiction, and social media addiction will
scale. Results as shown in Table 3, Cronbach’s alpha and CR of all the reduce their subjective well-being.
measurement variables in the total students, addicted students and non- In the non-addicted students test, the path coefficient of social use on
addicted students are greater than 0.7, AVE is greater than 0.5, indi­ social media addiction is significant, but the coefficient of influence is
cating that the scales and the collected data have high reliability. negative (β = -. 497, p < .001), which indicates that H1 has obtained
Secondly, in terms of discriminant validity analysis, we adopt the reverse support. Additionally, H3 (β = 0.331, p < .01) and H5 (β =
Heterotrait-Monotrait ratio (HTMT) approach. HTMT is the ratio of the − 0.341, p < .001) are supported, while H2 and H4 are not true. This
average of the items correlations across different constructs relative to shows that among the non-addicted students, the respondents also think
the average of the items correlation among the same construct (Hair that social media addiction will reduce subjective well-being. Different
et al., 2016). The results in Table 4 show that all values are under 0.85, from addicted students, they believe that social use will not only help
which indicates that the measured variables have good discriminant avoid social media addiction, but also contribute to subjective well-
validity and are suitable for path analysis. being.
Additionally, considering the indirect effect, the path coefficient
4.4. Correlation analysis (Social use →Social media addiction →Subjective well-being) is signif­
icant in the addicted students (β = − .118, p < .05) and non-addicted
Table 5 shows the results of correlation analysis of the main vari­ students (β = 0.170, p < .01), while the path coefficient (Entertain­
ables. From this, we know that among the correlations between de­ ment use →Social media addiction →Subjective well-being) is signifi­
mographic variables and the main measured variables, only education cant in the total students (β = − 0.058, p < .05) and addicted students (β
level and subjective well-being in non-addicted students is significant (r = − 0.036, p < .05).
= − 0.164, p < .05). Considering the correlation between the main
variables, the results of the three groups show that social use has a 5. Discussion
significant correlation with social media addiction (r = 0.160, r = 0.309,
r = − 0.299, p < .01), and social media addiction has a negative corre­ 5.1. Main findings
lation with subjective well-being (r = − 0.324, r = − 0.124, r = − 0.376,
p < .01). Additionally, in the total group and addicted group, enter­ Nowadays, there are still inconsistent conclusions on the relationship
tainment use is positively correlated with social media addiction (r = between social media use and subjective well-being (Phu & Gow., 2019;
.198, r = 0.219, p < .01), but this relationship is not significant (r = Yang & Lee, 2018). We try to explain these inconsistencies from the
− 0.141, p > .05) in the non-addicted group. perspective of different types of social media use and addiction. For this
purpose, our study explored the effects of different types of social media
4.5. Structural model testing use on social media addiction and subjective well-being, as well as the
relationship between social media addiction and subjective well-being.
Partial Least Square (PLS) is a parameter estimation method that In addition, according to the social media addiction level of the re­
validates predictive models, which has been well applied in the field of spondents, they were divided into addicted students and non-addicted
new technology use (Argyris & Xu, 2016; Zhao et al., 2020). As rec­ students, and the research model was verified using the data of total
ommended by Hair et al. (2016), the bootstrapping program of Smart students, addicted students, and non-addicted students in turn.
PLS software was used for structural model testing (5000 random sam­ Compared with non-addicted students, addicted students score
ples) and the relevant results were shown in Table 6. From this we know higher on social use and entertainment use, which is similar to previous
that in total group tests, the path coefficient of social use on social media research (Hormes et al., 2014), that is, addicted users spend more time
addiction is not significant (β = .100, p > .05), and H1 cannot be sup­ on social media. In contrast, non-addicted students score higher on
ported. The path coefficient of entertainment use on social media subjective well-being than addicted students, which indicates that
non-addicted students may often achieve higher subjective well-being
(Błachnio et al., 2016). This conclusion has also been verified in corre­
Table 2
lation analysis and path analysis. Among the addicted students, the
Descriptive analysis results of variables.
relationship between social use, entertainment use and subjective
Total (N = 370) Addicted (N = Non-addicted (N
well-being is not significant, respectively. For non-addicted students,
224) = 176)
although the relationship between entertainment use and subjective
M(SD) Min- M(SD) Min- M(SD) Min- well-being is not significant, the correlation coefficient and path coef­
max max max
ficient between social use and subjective well-being are both significant
Social use 10.60 3–15 10.89 4–15 10.13 3–15 and positive. That is to say, if college students can rationally use social
(2.23) (2.04) (2.42)
media, social use can enhance their subjective well-being (Pang, 2018b).
Entertainment 10.72 3–15 11.10 4–15 10.11 3–15
use (2.29) (2.13) (2.40) We have confirmed that different types of social media use have
Social media 48.59 18–90 55.32 39–90 38.17 18–54 different effects on college students’ social media addiction. Social
addiction (11.64) (8.35) (7.66) media use can be divided into two types: social use and entertainment
Subjective well- 13.19 4–20 12.50 4–20 14.26 6–20 use (Wang et al., 2014). The results of empirical analysis show that
being (3.41) (3.43) (3.09)
entertainment use is a predictor of social media addiction, which has

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Table 3
Index values of reliability measurement.
Cronbach’s alpha Composite reliability Average Variance Extracted

Total Addicted Non -addicted Total Addicted Non -addicted Total Addicted Non-addicted

Social use .703 .701 .788 .823 .783 .874 .610 .554 .700
Entertainment use .796 .716 .889 .880 .833 .928 .709 .626 .812
Social media addiction .921 .808 .886 .929 .812 .902 .504 .508 .525
Subjective well-being .784 .779 .757 .861 .857 .839 .611 .601 .583

addiction. The reason for this difference may be that non-addicted stu­
Table 4 dents are usually able to use social media rationally (Busalim et al.,
Heterotraite-monotrait ratio (HTMT).
2019) and online social activities can help them better maintain and
Social Entertainment Social media Subjective develop offline social relationships (Khalis & Mikami, 2018), enrich
use use addiction well-being
offline life, and avoid excessive dependence on social media.
Total Consistent with previous research (Błachnio et al., 2016; Ponnusamy
Social use et al., 2020), social media addiction has a negative impact on college
Entertainment .641
use
students’ subjective well-being, which is supported in the validation of
Social media .249 .252 all three groups. This shows that both addicted and non-addicted stu­
addiction dents believe that social media addiction will reduce their subjective
Subjective well- .185 .103 .387 well-being. Social media addiction means that college students have
being
symptoms (i.e., salience, tolerance, mood mediation, relapse, with­
Addicted
Social use drawal, and conflict) (Andreassen et al., 2012), which will have adverse
Entertainment .682 effects on their mental health, learning and life, and then reduce their
use subjective well-being.
Social media .532 .430 Social use and entertainment use also have different effects on col­
addiction
Subjective well- .195 .125 .331
lege students’ subjective well-being. The verification results of the total
being students and the non-addicted show that social use positively predicts
Non-addicted the subjective well-being of college students, that is, social use can help
Social use them improve subjective well-being (Pang, 2018b). This is because so­
Entertainment .704
cial use can help college students keep in touch with close and loose
use
Social media .370 .233 social relations, accumulate social capital, enrich daily life, and improve
addiction subjective well-being (Guo et al., 2014; Kim et al., 2020). However, this
Subjective well- .405 .204 .471 relationship does not hold in addicted students. This may be due to the
being fact that addicted students often spend a lot of time on social media, and
online social contact cannot be transformed into offline social relations,
been verified in the total students and addicted students. In both which make them ignore the people around them, thus reducing their
addicted and non-addicted students, social use has a significant effect on subjective well-being (Błachnio et al., 2016). In addition, social use also
social media addiction, but this relationship is not established in the has an indirect impact on subjective well-being through social media
total students. Therefore, entertainment use is more likely to cause so­ addiction, which has been verified in both addicted and non-addicted
cial media addiction in general, which is similar to earlier studies (Guo students. The influence coefficient is negative in addicted students,
et al., 2014). It needs to be emphasized that, in the group of addicted but positive in non-addicted students. For addicted students, social use
students, social use has a positive effect on college students’ social media can lead to social media addiction, which in turn reduces their subjective
addiction, but in non-addicted students, the effect is negative. This well-being. In contrast, non-addicted students can rationally use social
shows that addicted students think that social use is an important reason media, and social use will help them avoid social media addiction,
for the development of their social media addiction, while non-addicted thereby enhancing subjective well-being, which is similar to previous
students think that social use will help them avoid social media studies (Busalim et al., 2019; Coyne et al., 2019).

Table 5
Correlations for the main variables.
Gen. Age Edu. 2 3 4

Total
1.Social use .031 -.021 -.026 .624** .160** .104**
2.Entertainment use .093 -.047 .016 .198** .044
3.Social media addiction .031 -.045 .075 -.324**
4.Subjective well-being .069 .036 -.078
Addicted
1.Social use .076 -.031 -.020 .501** .309** .046
2.Entertainment use .129 -.032 -.024 .219** .068
3.Social media addiction -.023 .022 .040 -.124**
4.Subjective well-being -.130 .037 -.014
Non-addicted
1.Social use -.031 .009 -.061 .738** -.299** .314**
2.Entertainment use .044 -.049 .046 -.141 .154
3.Social media addiction .128 -.096 .058 -.376**
4.Subjective well-being -.021 .006 -.164*

Notes: *p < .05; **p < .01.

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Table 6 that, in general, entertainment use is more likely to lead to social media
Results of hypotheses testing. addiction, and social use helps to increase subjective well-being.
β t p Sig. Therefore, college students should realize the negative effects of social
media use, and use more social functions of social media to avoid
Total
Social use→Social media addiction .100 .710 .478 ns addiction and improve subjective well-being. Furthermore, social media
Entertainment use→Social media addiction .150 1.675 .044 * addiction has a negative impact on the subjective well-being of college
Social use→Subjective well-being .202 2.426 .015 * students. If college students have social media addiction symptoms, they
Entertainment use→Subjective well-being .024 .347 .729 ns should reduce the time spent on social media and participate in valuable
Social media addiction→Subjective well-being -.387 8.095 .000 ***
Social use→Social media addiction→Subjective -.039 1.732 .083 ns
academic and practical activities to overcome social media addiction
well-being and improve subjective well-being.
Entertainment use→Social media -.058 2.012 .036 *
addiction→Subjective well-being 5.3. Shortcomings and future study
Addicted
Social use→Social media addiction .436 3.175 .002 **
Entertainment use→Social media addiction .135 2.197 .031 * There are still some shortcomings in the research. First of all, the
Social use→Subjective well-being .092 .807 .420 ns samples are mainly from a comprehensive university in Anhui Province,
Entertainment use→Subjective well-being .067 .679 .497 ns China, and future research will expand the scope of investigation. Sec­
Social media addiction→Subjective well-being -.270 1.504 .033 *
ondly, we mainly groups respondents based on their level of addiction.
Social use→Social media addiction→Subjective -.118 2.225 .019 *
well-being In the future, the subjects could be further divided into groups from the
Entertainment use→Social media -.036 2.242 .039 * perspective of gender and age. Finally, the cross-section data is mainly
addiction→Subjective well-being used in the research, and longitudinal section data will be introduced in
Non-addicted the future to make the research conclusion more scientific.
Social use→Social media addiction -.497 4.444 .000 ***
Entertainment use→Social media addiction .187 1.488 .137 ns
Social use→Subjective well-being .331 2.612 .009 ** 6. Conclusion
Entertainment use→Subjective well-being -.124 1.190 .234 ns
Social media addiction→Subjective well-being -.341 3.864 .000 *** The use of social media has a subtle influence on the mental health of
Social use→Social media addiction→Subjective .170 2.962 .003 **
college students (Coyne et al., 2019). Our study found that different
well-being
Entertainment use→Social media -.064 1.288 .198 ns types of social media use have different effects on college students’ so­
addiction→Subjective well-being cial media addiction and subjective well-being. Entertainment use is
more likely to cause social media addiction, and social use is more
Notes: 1. *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001; 2. ns: non-significant.
helpful to enhance subjective well-being. In addition, the study also
confirmed that social media addiction has a negative effect on subjective
Although previous research has shown that entertainment use is
well-being. Compared with addicted users, non-addicted users can
negative relative to users’ subjective well-being (Guo et al., 2013; Pang,
perceive higher subjective well-being. Therefore, colleges and families
2018b), this conclusion has not been directly verified in the correlation
should pay attention to students’ social media use, and guide them to use
analysis and path analysis of the three groups. Considering the indirect
social media rationally to avoid social media addiction and improve
effect, entertainment use has an indirect negative impact on subjective
subjective well-being.
well-being through social media addiction in the total students and
addicted students. This shows that entertainment use may not directly
Declaration of competing interest
affect subjective well-being, but indirectly affects it through the medi­
ating role of social media addiction. When college students indulge in
The authors declared that they have no conflicts of interest to this
entertainment functions such as games and videos on social media, they
work.
will have addiction symptoms, and social media addiction will have a
negative impact on their subjective well-being (Błachnio et al., 2016;
Acknowledgments
Reer et al., 2019, pp. 1–20).

This study is supported by the Humanities and Social Science Project

5.2. Theoretical and practical contributions of Anhui Provincial Education Department (Grant No.SK2019A0030).

The research has some theoretical contributions. First, we confirmed References

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Secondly, we divided the subjects into addicted and non-addicted stu­
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