Examining the Association Between Digital Stress Components and Psychological Wellbeing: A Meta-Analysis

Extant research suggests that digital stress (DS) and its various components (Hall et al. in Psychol Assess 33(3):230-242, 2021) may mediate the association between social media use and psychosocial distress among adolescents and young adults. Yet no systematic review and meta-analysis has been conducted to examine the direct associations among DS components (i.e., approval anxiety, availability stress, fear of missing out [FOMO], connection overload, and online vigilance) and psychological outcomes. Thus, we aimed to comprehensively synthesize and quantify the association between these five DS components and psychosocial distress, and to examine whether these associations were statistically different from one another. Our search of PubMed, PsycINFO, and Communication and Mass Media Complete yielded a wide range of article abstracts across the five DS components. After reviewing inclusion and exclusion criteria, 7, 73, 60, 19, and 16 studies were included for availability stress, approval anxiety, FOMO, connection overload, and online vigilance, respectively. The results suggested that all five digital stress components had significant medium association with psychosocial distress (r = .26 to .34; p < .001). Age and sex did not significantly moderate the association between most digital stress components and psychosocial distress. However, age moderated the association between connection overload and psychosocial distress. Our findings further suggested no statistical differences among the associations between the five digital stress components and psychosocial distress. Notwithstanding its limitations, our outcomes help integrate the disparate effect sizes in the literature, indicate the strength of associations, and suggest directions for clinical intervention and future research.