Abstract: This paper adopts the statistical method of quantitative review, meta-analysis, to merge 35 empirical literatures concerning the relationship between social network usage and users' mental health, and obtain 41 independent effect values for meta-analysis, with a total sample size of 30,232. Meta-analysis results show that: (1) social network usage has a significant positive impact on users' mental health; (2) use types moderate the relationship between social network use and users' mental health, in which active use has a significant promoting effect, while negative use has a significant negative moderating effect. (3) The relationship between social network use and users' mental health was regulated by the age of the subjects, and the effect values were middle-aged, teenager and youth in turn; (4) The relationship between social network use and users' mental health was significantly affected by the Oriental cultural context, while the Western cultural context had a insignificant moderating effect.

Key words: font-size:14px, ">Social network usage, Mental health, Meta-analysis, Heterogeneity, Social network service