The passage of time has brought mankind to a seamless communication universe with informational technologies and social network sites (SNS). This study endeavours to examine the correlations between psychological distress and SNS among the general public. Five SNS needs were examined. A quantitative research design specifically a cross-sectional approach with a self-administered questionnaire was used to reach the pool of respondents. As symmetrical sampling is not the main concern in this study, the purposive sampling method was applied. A total of 210 responses were collected from Malaysians aged 18 and above. The findings reveal that overall psychological distress has led to the SNS needs with personal integrative needs (β = 0.332) emerged as the core needs followed by diversion need (β = 0.241), affective needs (β = 0.239), social interactive needs (β = 0.210) and cognitive needs (β = 0.197). While the bulk of the studies examines the use of SNS leading to psychological distress, the current study empirically relates psychological distress as the antecedents of SNS usage. The findings offer insights to the respective authorities and mental associations for drawing up recouping strategies and programs to cope with mental health issues via SNS.