SOCIAL MEDIA-BASED SOCIAL CAPITAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING: EXPLORING THE MEDIATIONAL ROLE OF SELF-ESTEEM

The trend of intensive social media utilization signifies the importance of technologies in individual lives to interact with recent and original connections. Concurrently, social media facilitate communication and reflection on personal and social issues to elevate self-esteem and psychological well-being. The present study aimed to empirically appraise three types of social media-based social capital on self-esteem and psychological well-being. A web-based cross-sectional survey was implemented to collect data from 240 Jordanian respondents. Subsequently, partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) and artificial neural network (ANN) analysis were performed on the collected data. The findings demonstrated that the bonding, bridging, and maintaining social capital significantly increased self-esteem levels before significantly harnessing psychological well-being. Furthermore, self-esteem significantly mediated the association between social capital (bonding and bridging) and psychological well-being. Similarly, the ANN analysis revealed that self-esteem with social capital bonding and maintaining were the three significant psychological well-being predictors. Resultantly, the study outcomes shed light on the importance of social media-based social capital in nurturing self-esteem and psychological well-being, in which the mediational role of self-esteem is vital to establishing psychological well-being. As personal social media requirements vary amongst individuals, social media activities could also engender negative psychological well-being, which necessitates the achievement of optimal self-esteem degrees from social media usage to attain an appropriate psychological well-being level.