Mind Over Media Dataset

The research hypothesizes that a growth mindset positively influences well-being, while perceived peer pressure, fear of missing out, perceived cybervictimization, and social comparison orientation negatively affect well-being. A structural equation modeling approach tests these hypotheses using data from a survey of 612 undergraduate students aged 18–24, exploring relationships between social media use factors, growth mindset, and well-being. The final sample consisted of 612 respondents. These participants’ age range from 18 to 24 years old (Mage = 19.54, SDage = 1.24; 67.5% females, 27.8% males, 4.7% alternatives).

The data was collected through a questionnaire comprised of seven sections including 1) Personal Information (participants provided basic details such as gender, age, and year of study, social media spending time (respondents shared insights into their daily social media usage, including the average time spent on various platforms), 2) PERMA Well-being (this section assessed participants' overall well-being across five dimensions: Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment), 3) Growth Mindset (participants evaluated their beliefs about challenges, obstacles, effort, criticism, and success of others), 4) Social Comparison Orientation (Respondents indicated their tendency to compare themselves to others regarding to abilities and opinions, 5) Perceived peer pressure (participants rated the extent to which they felt pressured by their peers to use social media for various activities), 6) Fear of missing out (respondents assessed their levels of missing out on three aspects of fear of missing out, on social events, news, and commercial), and 7) Perceived cybervictimization (participants reported how often participants experienced four types of cybervictimization: visual cybervictimization, verbal cybervictimization, social exclusion, and impersonation.

Notable findings shows a growth mindset strongly correlates with enhanced well-being, substantiating the hypothesis that personal belief that is malleable promotes better mental health. Social comparison orientation negatively impacts well-being, indicating that unfavorable comparisons on social platforms reduce mental health. However, social comparison’s negative impact on well-being is mitigated by a growth mindset, emphasizing cognitive buffers against social media induced ill-being. In addition, fear of missing out demonstrated a positive association with well-being. This contrasts with its traditionally negative portrayal, suggesting that under certain conditions, staying informed via social media fosters connection and satisfaction.