2026-10-12T04:50:34Z https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai

oai:figshare.com:article/33949942 2026-09-21T05:36:36Z category_427 portal_316 item_type_3 month_year_09_2026

Supplementary file 1_Platform-specific digital media use and psychological distress among Turkish adults: evidence from a nationally representative, cross-sectional survey.docx Aydın Aktay (25080520) Muhammed Veysel Bilici (25080523) Mehmet Veysel Karataş (25080526) Abdullah Yıldırmaz (25080529) Public Health and Health Services not elsewhere classified age digital media use loneliness nationally representative survey platform heterogeneity psychological distress social media Türkiye <p>Digital media’s mental-health signature may depend on which platform a population uses, yet nationally representative evidence that distinguishes platforms is scarce, especially for upper-middle-income, Muslim-majority, non-Arab settings. We examined platform-specific associations between digital media use and psychological distress in the Turkish adult population, and whether age moderates them, using the 2024 Turkish General Social Survey, a probability-based, nationally representative survey of adults aged 18 and over (N = 2,615; analytical N = 1,478 after listwise deletion). Psychological distress was measured with a nine-item past-week negative-affect index informed by the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), and unweighted hierarchical ordinary least squares regression with heteroskedasticity-consistent (HC3) robust standard errors modeled demographic, aggregate-exposure, platform-specific, age-interaction, and loneliness blocks, with a Johnson–Neyman procedure characterizing age moderation. Instagram use (β = +.066, p = .011) was associated with higher psychological distress and WhatsApp use (β = -.073, p = .007) with lower distress, whereas total internet time, TikTok, and YouTube showed no detectable association. Overall social-media time was likewise positively associated with distress (β = +.088, p = .016), but the platform contrasts, not aggregate exposure, survived the most demanding clustering and exposure-scale checks. The positive Instagram association declined with age and was statistically indistinguishable from zero by the early forties, a secondary finding that turned on whether loneliness entered the model (age-by-Instagram β = -.069, p = .014 with loneliness, β = -.060, p = .059 without). Adding loneliness — an affective covariate overlapping the outcome battery — raised explained variance to R² = .359 (largely shared variance) while the platform and aggregate coefficients remained significant. In this national sample the platform types diverged: algorithm-driven image-platform use (Instagram) showed a small positive association with distress, interpersonal-messaging use (WhatsApp) a small inverse (protective-direction) one. The headline effect sizes were below Cohen’s small-effect benchmark and estimated at the limit of what this design could detect, and the cross-sectional data require longitudinal confirmation of the platform contrasts. Whether distinguishing platform types, rather than treating screen time as uniform, improves population-level digital well-being efforts remains a hypothesis for longitudinal and experimental testing.</p> 2026-09-21T05:36:36Z Dataset Dataset 10.3389/fpubh.2026.1941229.s001 https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/Supplementary_file_1_Platform-specific_digital_media_use_and_psychological_distress_among_Turkish_adults_evidence_from_a_nationally_representative_cross-sectional_survey_docx/33949942 CC BY 4.0