Longitudinal mediating role of dispositional envy between upward social comparison and depression in college students social networking / 中国学校卫生

ABSTRACT

Objective@#To explore the longitudinal mediating role of dispositional envy between upward social comparison to social networking and depression in college students, so as to provide a reference for depression prevention in college.@*Methods@#Using convenience cluster sampling, a total of 1 487 college students from 7 universities in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and other provinces of China were recruited to participate in a three month longitudinal study, which contained 3 waves of date collection in September 2019 (T1), October 2019 (T2) and November 2019 (T3). These college students were surveyed with Social Network Site Upward Comparison Questionnaire, Dispositional Envy Scale and Depression Scale. Correlations analysis, missing value and common method biases were performed with SPSS 25.0. Confirmatory factor analysis and longitudinal mediation analysis were performed by Mplus 8.3.@*Results@#The detection rates of depression of college students in the first to third (T1-T3) wave were 3.6%, 4.2%, and 2.8% . The upward social comparison to social networking (T12.81±0.94, T22.69±0.99, T32.47±1.06), dispositional envy (T11.97±0.75, T2 1.87 ±0.74, T31.76±0.75) and depression (T11.81±0.66, T21.74±0.65, T31.68±0.69) of college students showed a decreasing trend, and time main effects were statistically significant ( F=71.97, η 2=0.050; F=57.84, η 2= 0.040 ; F=39.64, η 2= 0.030 , P <0.01). T1 upward social comparison to social networking significantly predicted T2 dispositional envy ( β =0.25); T1 upward social comparison to social networking significantly predicted T3 depression ( β =0.10); T2 dispositional envy significantly predicted T3 depression ( β =0.55), showing that the longitudinal mediating role of dispositional envy was statistically significant ( P <0.01), the indirect effect accounted for 58.3%.@*Conclusions@#College students upward social comparison to social networking indirectly affects depression through the dispositional envy. Intervening dispositional envy could reduce college students depression levels in the future.