Erosion or protection? Testing directionality between problematic social media use and mindfulness over one year using a latent cross-lagged panel model.

Background: Problematic social media use (PSMU) and mindfulness are consistently negatively associated, but longitudinal evidence on their directional relationship remains limited. This study examined whether mindfulness prospectively predicts lower later PSMU (protection pathway), whether PSMU predicts lower later mindfulness (erosion pathway), or whether their longitudinal association is bidirectional.

Methods: Participants were 246 early adolescents from German-speaking Switzerland (48.4 % girls), aged 10 to 13 years (M = 10.93, SD = 0.51), assessed approximately one year apart in spring 2024 and spring 2025. After establishing longitudinal measurement invariance, a two-wave latent cross-lagged panel model was estimated to examine temporal stability and prospective associations between the constructs.

Results: PSMU and mindfulness were moderately and negatively associated within both waves, and both constructs showed temporal stability. Cross-lagged effects were asymmetric: baseline mindfulness did not predict later PSMU, whereas higher baseline PSMU predicted lower mindfulness at follow-up (β = - 0.188). Supplementary analyses showed no evidence of sex differences, and sensitivity analyses supported the same directional pattern.

Conclusions: Findings suggest that, in early adolescence, PSMU may be more likely to undermine later mindfulness than mindfulness is to protect against later PSMU. This pattern provides initial support for an erosion pathway during an early phase of social media uptake and highlights mindfulness as a possible outcome of digital behavior.