Social media, defined as interactive Web applications [1], have been on the rise globally, particularly among adults [2, 3]. Overall, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and Instagram were the most used social network worldwide [4, 5]. Hundreds of publications have discussed the benefits and harm stemming from social media in different age groups of both genders [6].
Of particular interest is the impact of social media on the psychology and self-image of users. A recently published report indicated that social media can be used to forecast and prevent suicide attempts at the national level [7].
Another recent report indicated that social media, particularly Facebook, are positively correlated with divorce [8]. Survey studies, such as that conducted by Clayton et al. [9], had shown that high levels of Facebook use, when mediated by Facebook-related conflict with romantic partners, significantly predict negative relationship outcomes [9–11]. Previous studies clearly indicated that social media makes it easy for users to reconnect with any past lover, which could lead to emotional cheating and this could then lead to a breakup or divorce [9–11]. The
diverse psychological and behavioral effects of social media on users necessitate further and deeper analysis. Such an
analysis will
be of value not only to
academic researchers, but also to sociology experts, psychologists, psychiatrists, and even to those in the field of telecommunications to adapt and tailor these social media to the psychological health and needs of the users. Bibliometric and scientometric studies on Facebook and other social media have been carried out to assess the research trends in these social media in general [12–15]. Similarly, several bibliometric and scientometric studies have been accomplished to assess the research trends in psychology and behavior [16–18]. However, no search of the literature for bibliometric or scientometric analyses of psychology publications pertaining to social media was found. In response, this study was designed to address this gap by mapping the literature regarding the largest and most popular social media (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and Instagram) [4, 5] in the field of psychology. Specifically, this study will assess the growth in publications, citation analysis, international collaboration, author productivity, emerging topics and the mapping of frequent terms in publications pertaining to social media in the field of psychology. [...]
The scientific landscape of main research areas related to social media in psychology is presented in Fig. 3, based on the retrieved publications terms co-occurrence network from the retrieved publications. The
most important research areas related to social media in psychology were personality psychology, experimental psychology, psychological risk factors, and developmental psychology. Based on the map, the
four main clusters (denoted by the green, blue, red, and yellow colours) were characterised by the most commonly used terms in the research related to social media in the psychology field. Green coloured cluster represented terms related to the
developmental psychology topic, such as
“child”, “adolescent”, or “adult”;
blue coloured cluster represented terms related to
personality psychology, such as
“extraversion”, “openness”, or “romantic”;
red coloured cluster represented terms related to
experimental psychology, such as
“empirical”, “experiment”, or “mechanism”; and
yellow coloured cluster represented terms related to
psychological risk factors, such as
“risk” or “alcohol”. [...]
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