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. 2018 Jan 25;13(1):e0191810.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0191810. eCollection 2018.

What does media use reveal about personality and mental health? An exploratory investigation among German students

Julia Brailovskaia  1 , Jürgen Margraf  1
Affiliations

What does media use reveal about personality and mental health? An exploratory investigation among German students

Julia Brailovskaia et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between personality traits, mental health variables and media use among German students. The data of 633 participants were collected. Results indicate a positive association between general Internet use, general use of social platforms and Facebook use, on the one hand, and self-esteem, extraversion, narcissism, life satisfaction, social support and resilience, on the other hand. Use of computer games was found to be negatively related to these personality and mental health variables. The use of platforms that focus more on written interaction (Twitter, Tumblr) was assumed to be negatively associated with positive mental health variables and significantly positively with depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms. In contrast, Instagram use, which focuses more on photo-sharing, correlated positively with positive mental health variables. Possible practical implications of the present results for mental health, as well as the limitations of the present work are discussed.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

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Grants and funding

This study was supported by Alexander von Humboldt Professorship awarded to Jürgen Margraf by the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation. Furthermore, we acknowledge support by the Open Access Publication Funds of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum to JB. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.