The interplay between personality and mental health has been a focus of research for decades. Neuroticism personality type has shown a strong association with anxiety, mood disorders, depression, and substance abuse disorders. Individuals with neurotic traits are temperamentally sensitivity to hostility, self-pity, irrational thinking, self-consciousness, and negative mood. Neuroticism represents two opposite poles of a single dimension, which are emotional stability and negative emotionality. Compared to individuals low in neuroticism, individuals high in neuroticism maintain a higher baseline negative mood and take longer to recover from elevated negative mood after experiencing a stressor. Unsurprisingly then, neurotic individuals avoid face to face communications fearing social rejection. Therefore, online communications may seem more appealing to neurotic individuals.
The lack of impulse control in neurotics could lead to excessive online communications resulting in social media addiction. Empirical research showed that individuals who manifest high psychological vulnerability are prone to Facebook addiction. Another study found that neuroticism and negative mood are positively related and Facebook addiction partially mediated this relationship.
In a sample of 669 adults (Mage=28.60, SD=10.91; Female=391; mentally ill=111), Abbasi (2025) examined the link between neuroticism and social media addiction in the context of mental health. Confirming previous findings, results revealed that neuroticism is positively related with social media addiction. Furthermore, mental health moderates the relationship between neuroticism and social media addiction. Put simply, the relationship between neuroticism and social media addiction is strong in individuals who are not diagnosed with a mental illness. Interestingly, the relationship between neuroticism and social media addiction is weak in individuals who are diagnosed with a mental illness . Further research on personality and mental health could determine the underlying mechanism protecting neurotics against social media addiction.
