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Depression, anxiety, and loneliness have long been recognized as global mental health concerns. To temporarily relieve psychological distress, self-soothing behavior is common, including engagement in sexual behaviors that are linked to positive mental well-being. Considering the COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbated many mental health ailments alongside physical distancing regulations, we specifically examined online sexual behavior via the use of emergent digital sexual technologies, or sextech. In a 2019 study of 8004 American adults, we assessed whether people experiencing higher anxiety, depression, and/or loneliness were more likely to engage in sextech use. Furthermore, we examined whether anxiety or depression mediated the association between loneliness and sextech use, as loneliness is one contributor to anxiety and depression. People with higher anxiety and depression were more likely to engage in sextech. However, those who were more lonely were less likely to engage with sextech, suggesting the aforementioned patterns were not due to lack of social connection. Our findings suggest people with mental health struggles may be drawn to interactive, digital forms of sexual behavior as a means of alleviating symptoms through distraction or self-soothing. This insight offers an important pathway for expanding the scope of mental health interventions, particularly as technology becomes increasingly prevalent and accessible in everyday life.

According to Rusbult's (1980) investment model, relationships are built and maintained through continual investment in one partner over potential alternative partners. Social media have continued to become more integrated into people's personal lives, with romantic relationship processes often unfolding in this new landscape. A large body of extant literature has explored how social media influence ongoing romantic relationships, but less is known about how social media facilitate relationship transitions (i.e., initiation, dissolution) and associated investment behaviors. In a large and diverse sample (N = 1521), we examine young adults' (18–29 years) social media investment behaviors around the beginnings and ends of their relationships, with a particular focus on how gender, age, and sexual orientation influence behaviors such as posting and removing of images with partners, following and un‐following partners and members of partners' social networks, direct messaging, and commenting on partners' posts. Our results suggest that men and sexual minorities more often engage in investment behaviors earlier in the relationship and after relationship dissolution. However, women and sexual minorities more often engage in disinvestment behaviors after dissolution, including removing traces of an ex‐partner from one's page and blocking them on social media entirely. Our results provide further understanding of how young American adults are enacting each relationship stage on social media and how the intersection of social media and romantic relationships differs by demographic factors.

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