ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Mental Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1663729
This article is part of the Research TopicYouth Mental HealthView all 6 articles
The Mediating Role of Social Media Disorder in the Relationship Between Social Media Use and Self-Harm Behavior in Indonesian Adolescents
Provisionally accepted
Fransiska Kaligis1,2*
Cokorda Istri Agung Dewinta Adnyani1Kevin Girisamudra Wikanta1Muhammad Dzaky Darmawan1Muhammad Reza1Billy Pramatirta1
Ruziana Masiran3- 1Faculty of Medicine, University of Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia
- 2Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
- 3Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Malaysia
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Introduction: Social media use in adolescence has been at an all-time high, along with the constant increase of self-harm behavior. Existing research on the relationship between social media usage and self-harm behavior in adolescent is inconsistent and scarce. We aimed to determine the relationship between adolescent self-harm behavior and social media usage, as well as to explore the mediating role of social media disorder in the relationship between social media use and self-harm behavior in Indonesian adolescents. Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted to investigate the relationship between self-harm behavior and social media use in 1096 adolescents aged 13-18 years old, who attend secondary and high schools in Jakarta. Results: Higher social media usage intensity was significantly correlated with increased instances of self-harm (p<.001). Similarly, a significant association was found between social media disorder and self-harm behavior (p<.001). Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) yielded an acceptable and good fit of latent construct modeling based on several indices. Regression analysis indicated a strong link between social media usage time and social media disorder (β=0.277, p=0.035), and between social media disorder and self-harm behavior (β=0.353, p<0.001). Conclusion: Social media usage intensity and social media disorder was associated with self-harm behavior in adolescents, with social media disorder partially mediating the link between social media usage intensity and self-harm behavior. Our findings emphasize the importance of monitoring and managing social media use among adolescents to mitigate the risk of self-harm.
Keywords: Adolescent, Mental Health, self-harm, Social Media, disorder, Mediating
Received: 10 Jul 2025; Accepted: 23 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kaligis, Adnyani, Wikanta, Darmawan, Reza, Pramatirta and Masiran. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Fransiska Kaligis, fransiska.kaligis@ui.ac.id
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.