Digital Dilemmas: How Problematic Social Media Use Links Personality Traits to Adolescent Psychosocial Development

ABSTRACT Previous studies have primarily focused on the risk factors for adolescent depression and aggression, with insufficient research exploring the protective factors for psychosocial development from positive psychology perspective. Particularly in the context of the digital age, the role of problematic social media use in the mechanisms underlying these relationships has yet to be investigated in the Chinese context. This study aims to examine the direct effects of resilience and self‐control as personality traits on adolescent internalizing and externalizing outcomes, investigate the mediating role of problematic social media use and the gender differences. Using multi‐stage cluster random sampling method, this study recruited 960 adolescents (mean = 14.9, 50.6% females) from S city for a self‐administered questionnaire survey. Structural equation modelling is employed to validate the proposed theoretical hypotheses. The results show that both resilience and self‐control have significant direct effects on adolescent depression and aggression. Additionally, problematic social media use plays a partial mediating role among resilience, self‐control, depression and aggression. Gender only moderates the path from problematic social media use to depression, with the effect being stronger for female adolescents than for males. This study not only provides a new theoretical framework for understanding adolescents' psychological and behavioural mechanisms in the digital era but also provides evidence‐based support for social work interventions addressing social media use and psychosocial development of adolescents.