ArticleBMC psychology2023
Adolescent sadfishing on social media: anxiety, depression, attention seeking, and lack of perceived social support as potential contributors.
Article in BMC psychology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Impact of Social Media Use on Physical, Mental, Social, and Emotional Health, Sleep Quality, Body Image, and Mood: Evidence from 21 Countries-A Systematic Literature Review with Narrative Synthesis.International journal of behavioral medicine · 2025Pooled it
- A Closer Look at Adolescent Mental Health: Prevalence of Internalizing and Externalizing Problems Across Educational and Gender Groups.Iranian journal of psychiatry · 2026Article
- Toward developing adolescent-centered machine learning methods to detect depression: Interviews with Latino adolescents to identify signals of emotional and somatic symptoms within social media data.PLOS digital health · 2026Article
- The impact of social media overload on learning engagement: a moderated mediation model.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Effects of mindfulness, music therapy, and social support on adolescents test anxiety.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- From family social support to problematic internet use: a serial mediation model of hostility and depression.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Relationship between fear of evaluation, ambivalence over emotional expression, and self-compassion among university students.BMC psychology · 2024Article
- Enigma of social media use: complexities of social media addiction through the serial mediating effects of emotions and self-presentation.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundSympathy-seeking negative online self-disclosure, or "sadfishing," has proliferated in social media. This study investigates sadfishing by developing and validating a brief self-report questionnaire of the construct and exploring potential psychological correlates.
methodsA total of 345 Iranian adolescent social media users (M
resultsFactor analyses revealed a unidimensional structure of the 5-item Social Media Sadfishing Questionnaire. The questionnaire yielded sound construct validity and internal consistency. Anxiety, depression, and attention seeking were positively associated with sadfishing, while perceived social support from family and friends was negatively associated with sadfishing. Negative online reactions to sadfishing were rare. Boys reported higher sadfishing tendencies than girls at age 12; however, sadfishing in boys declined at a higher rate than in girls with age.
conclusionsThe findings suggest that negative affect and attention seeking, combined with feelings of low social support, can be associated with adolescent sadfishing on social media. The quantitative results shed new light on the contribution of psychosocial factors to sadfishing.
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