Social Capital and Psychological Distress Among Chinese University Students: The Predictive Role of Social Network Site Use and Gender

James Alexander Gordon on 16th September 2025



Author Information

Kelly Ka Lai Lam, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China

Abstract

Social network site use has become a part of necessary component of human beings worldwide, particularly for youth. The current study attempts to investigate four types of widely used social network sites (SNSs; Facebook, WeChat, Instagram, and Twitter) from the perspective of behavior and frequency of usage, their impacts on social capital (cognitive and structural social capital), and psychological ill-being (anxiety and depressive symptoms). Self-reported data were collected from 293 Chinese students. Results showed that usage behavior and frequency of SNS were not significantly related to their level of depressive symptoms, and only commenting behavior was significantly related to anxiety symptoms (B = –0.74, p < .05). Students tended to use Twitter less than other types of SNSs. Their frequency of Facebook use (B = –0.54, p < .01), WeChat use (B = 0.54, p < .01), and Twitter use (B = 1.01, p < .01), and pressing like behavior in SNSs (B = –0.40, p < .05) significantly contributed to structural social capital, while only students’ pressing like behavior was significantly associated with their cognitive social capital (B = 0.13, p < .05). No gender effect was observed. Our findings contributed to a better understanding of which SNSs use and behavior acted as significant predictive roles, suggesting the need to take the frequency and behavior of SNS use into account when considering the impact of SNSs use on students’ social capital and psychological ill-being.


Paper Information

Conference: ACP2026
Stream: Mental Health

This paper is part of the ACP2026 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Lam K. (2026) Social Capital and Psychological Distress Among Chinese University Students: The Predictive Role of Social Network Site Use and Gender ISSN: 2187-4743 – The Asian Conference on Psychology & the Behavioral Sciences 2026 Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 49-65) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2187-4743.2026.6
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2187-4743.2026.6

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