Compulsive Use & Behavioural Addiction

Many have argued that digital technologies such as smartphones and social media are addictive. We develop an economic model of digital addiction and estimate it using a randomized experiment. Temporary incentives to reduce social media use have persistent effects, suggesting social media are habit forming. Allowing people to set limits on their future screen time substantially reduces use, suggesting self-control problems. Additional evidence suggests people are inattentive to habit formation and partially unaware of self-control problems. Looking at these facts through the lens of our model suggests that self-control problems cause 31 percent of social media use. (JEL D12, D61, D90, D91, I31, L86, O33)

Background Technology is ever evolving, with more and more diverse activities becoming possible on screen-based devices. However, participating in a heavy screen-based lifestyle may come at a cost. Our hypothesis was that problematic social media use increased the prevalence of mental health outcomes. Objective This study seeks to systematically examine problematic social media use in youth and its association with symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress. Methods A systematic search was conducted to identify studies in adolescents and young adults, using the databases Engineering Village, Psycinfo, Pubmed, and Web of Science. A total of 18 studies were identified, with a total of 9269 participants in our review and included in the meta-analysis. Results Our metaregression shows moderate but statistically significant correlations between problematic social media use and depression (r=0.273, P<.001), anxiety (r=0.348, P<.001), and stress (r=0.313, P<.001). We did not find evidence of heterogeneity of these summary correlations by age, gender, or year of publication. Conclusions This study provides further evidence of the association between problematic social media use and negative mental health among adolescents and young adults and supports future research to focus on the underlying mechanisms of problematic use of social media. Trial Registration PROSPERO CRD42021222309; https://tinyurl.com/2p9y4bjx

Six-item TikTok Use Disorder scale validated against device-level telemetry; loss-of-control and tolerance markers track time-on-app.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging study comparing neural responses to personalized (algorithmically recommended) versus generally-recommended TikTok video clips. Personalized recommendations elicited significantly stronger activation in the default mode network (associated with self-referential processing) and the ventral tegmental area (the dopaminergic origin of the brain's reward circuitry). Identifies specific neural mechanisms by which algorithmic personalisation may bias user engagement and behaviour.