The effect of social media use on employment anxiety of college students: the mediating role of social support

作者：Feng Li, Liangkun Chen, Lexin Huang, Shenghua Ma · 发表于：Frontiers in Psychology · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1477306 · 被引用次数：6 · 研究领域：Impact of Technology on Adolescents、Cyberloafing and Workplace Behavior、Technostress in Professional Settings

Under the dual context of labor market transformations and the widespread adoption of social media, college students face increasingly severe employment pressure. This study integrates social comparison theory and stress coping theory to systematically explore the complex relationships among social media use, social support, and employment anxiety through structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis of questionnaire data from 400 Chinese college students. The findings reveal that: (1) High-frequency social media use is significantly positively correlated with employment anxiety, with mechanisms involving the depletion of psychological resources due to information overload and passive social comparison; (2) Social support exhibits a paradoxical mediating role: while online support is strongly associated with social media use, its indirect effects suggest that online interactions may exacerbate anxiety through irrational competition and superficial emotional feedback. This phenomenon is termed the "reinforcement paradox" of online support-a paradoxical mechanism where digital socialization, intended to alleviate stress through peer connection, instead amplifies anxiety by creating self-reinforcing cycles of social comparison and emotional dependency. This paradox arises from the dual-edged nature of online interactions: while providing perceived support, they simultaneously normalize competitive benchmarks and reduce emotional feedback to performative gestures, which collectivel...