BMC Public Health. 2025 Nov 21;25(1):4096. doi: 10.1186/s12889-025-25428-8.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Adolescence is a critical period for development, and health risk behaviors at this stage can have lasting physical and mental health consequences. While previous studies have examined social media’s role in adolescent behavior, they often overlook the specific impact of positive feedback and the underlying psychological mechanisms. This study addresses this gap by exploring the influence of social media positive feedback on adolescents’ health risk behaviors and analyzing the mediating roles of cognitive bias and negative emotions.
METHODS: A cross-sectional survey design was adopted for this study, and data were collected from 6210 adolescents. The Health Risk Behavior Scale, Social Media Positive Feedback Scale, Negative Cognitive Processing Bias Questionnaire, and DASS-21 Scale were used for assessment. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was employed to examine both the direct and indirect effects of social media positive feedback on adolescents’ health risk behaviors and to explore the mediating roles of cognitive bias and emotions.
RESULTS: Positive feedback on social media, adolescents’ health risk behaviors, cognitive bias, and negative emotions were all found to be significantly positively correlated. The analysis indicated that social media positive feedback was associated with adolescents’ health risk behaviors both directly and indirectly through cognitive bias and negative emotions. Furthermore, cognitive bias and negative emotions acted as chain mediators in the relationship between social media positive feedback and health risk behaviors.
CONCLUSIONS: This study found that social media positive feedback was significantly associated with adolescents’ health risk behaviors, and cognitive bias and emotional states play a mediating role in this influence. These findings highlight the potential role of social media in influencing adolescents’ risk behaviors and suggest that public health interventions should focus on the impact of the social media environment on adolescents’ behaviors. Interventions that improve emotional regulation and reduce cognitive biases may help decrease the occurrence of health risk behaviors.
PMID:41272610 | DOI:10.1186/s12889-025-25428-8
