Adolescent Social Media Use and Emotional Intelligence: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Emotional intelligence, which encompasses the ability to perceive, understand, express, and regulate emotions, is recognized as critical to the socioemotional development of adolescents. Despite its significance, the relationship between emotional intelligence and social media use among adolescents remains largely unexplored in the literature. This work aimed to provide a review that examines the association between adolescents’ emotional intelligence, including its dimensions (self-esteem, emotion regulation, empathy), and social media use. An online search of two electronic databases identified 25 studies that met the inclusion criteria. The results suggest that lower levels of emotional intelligence are associated with increased problematic social media use among adolescents, with social media use showing a negative correlation with adolescents’ self-esteem. In addition, difficulties in emotion regulation were associated with problematic social media use, while social media use was positively correlated with empathy. These findings underscore the importance of considering emotional intelligence as a key factor in understanding the relationship between adolescents and problematic social media use.