Fig. 4

Forest plot for negative affect. This forest plot presents the Hedges’ g effect sizes and 95% confidence intervals for individual studies investigating the impact of social media abstinence on negative affect. Each study is represented by a square, with the size of the square reflecting the study’s weight in the overall analysis. The diamond at the bottom represents the overall effect size, while the line beneath the diamond symbolizes the prediction interval. Overall, there is a non-significant effect (g = -0.01, 95%-CI = [− 0.13; 0.10]), with considerable heterogeneity between the studies (I² = 64%, p < 0.01).