comparing personality traits, mental health and self-esteem in users and non-users of social networks

Background: various aspects of the psychological component have been affected by the spread of social networks and using these networks by the students. objectives: this study aimed to examine the personality traits, mental health and self-esteem in users and non-users of social net- works. methods: this study conducted as a casual-comparative study among the descriptive designs. in this regard, 372 female high school students studying in the school year 2015 - 2016 were selected from the instagram and telegram users of the social networks using multi-stage cluster sampling. self-made demographic information questionnaire for the participants, rosenberg questionnaire for evaluating self-esteem index, hegzako questionnaire for personality traits and goldberg mental health questionnaire for mental health index were used in the study. data were analyzed by chi-square, analysis of variance and bonferroni test. results: the results showed that there was a significant difference between users and non-users groups in terms of openness per- sonality component (p < 0.05). furthermore, there was a significant difference in four components of mental health (p < 0.01). there was also a significant difference for self-esteem index between two groups (p < 0.05). conclusions: the findings of this study emphasize the attention to psychological factors in planning of preventive interventions.