ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Media Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1548663
Connection and Happiness: An Interactive Study of Social Media, Social Capital, and the Subjective Well-being of International Students
Provisionally accepted
- 1Youjiang Medical University for Nationalities, Baise, China
- 2Baise University, Baise City, China
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The subjective well-being of international students is crucial for their adaptation and academic success in a foreign country. Based on online social capital theory, this study examines how social media use affects the subjective well-being of international students and explores the underlying mechanisms and the moderating role of college attachment. A questionnaire survey was conducted among 21 universities in China, yielding 474 valid responses, which were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The findings indicate that social media use significantly and positively predicts the subjective well-being of international students, as well as bridging, bonding, and maintaining social capital. Notably, only bonding social capital partially mediates the relationship between social media use and subjective well-being. Additionally, college attachment positively moderates the indirect effect of bridging social capital only， but it did not significantly moderate the relationship between social media use and subjective well-being. These results highlight that social media use can enhance the subjective well-being of international students through social capital.This effect is moderated by college attachment, providing valuable insights for relevant stakeholders.
Keywords: ： Social Media, Subjective well-being, social capital, College attachment, international student
Received: 03 Jan 2025; Accepted: 24 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Duan, Lu and Lyu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ninggui Duan, Youjiang Medical University for Nationalities, Baise, China
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