The relationship between social media addiction and psychotic-like experiences in a large nonclinical student sample

Background: The use of social media networks has grown exponentially in the past decade. These forms of communication are concerning when considering mental health. There has been very little research to inform our understanding of how social media addiction (SMA) may relate to mental illness.Aims: We aimed to examine the link between SMA and Psychotic-Like Experiences (PLEs) in a sample of nonclinical Tunisian youth.Methods: The Positive Subscale of Community Assessment of Psychotic Experiences and the Arabic Social Media Addiction Scale (ASMAS) were administered to a total of 1007 college students (64.6% female; mean age = 21.9).Results: The majority of students (86.4%) spent their free time on the internet, and 98.5% reported regular use of social media networks. After controlling for demographic variables (gender, age) and substance use, the number of hours of social media use per day and the social consequences dimension of the ASMAS contributed significantly to the prediction of positive PLEs (bizarre experiences, perceptual abnormalities, persecutory ideation and magical thinking).Conclusions: Our results build on previous literature that mainly focused on general internet use, and consistently indicated an association between SMA and PLEs. SMA may be an important target for early intervention in psychosis.