The Role of Feelings of Compulsion in Young Adults’ Self-Regulation of Their Social Media Use

• In Event: Exploring the Role of Metamotivational Feelings in Students’ Regulation of Their Motivation

Abstract

Aims/Background
Problematic social media use is negatively associated with well-being and positively associated with anxiety and depression (Valkenburg, 2022). One reason that some individuals may struggle with social media is because they find it difficult to disengage, even when they believe that there is something more important that they should be doing. In the present studies, we examined this type of self-control conflict from a metamotivational perspective (Miele et al., 2020; Miele & Scholer, 2018). More specifically, we examined whether young adults who struggle to disengage from social media are more likely to experience a feeling of compulsion when using social media, compared to those who do not struggle to disengage. We also examined whether individuals differ in their interpretations of this metamotivational feeling; and, if so, whether certain interpretations are more adaptive than others. The long-term aim of this research is to determine whether teaching adolescents and young adults to be more aware of their metamotivational feelings and to interpret these feelings in a constructive manner will make them more effective at regulating their social media use.

Method
Study 1 included 158 young adults (age 18 to 25) recruited from Prolific and Study 2 included 157 college students recruited from a undergraduate participant pool. For information about participant demographics and exclusions, see Table 1.
Participants in both studies were asked a series of open- and closed-ended questions about their use of social media, self-regulatory strategies, and feelings of compulsion (see Table 2). They also responded to questionnaires assessing their emotion dysregulation, interoceptive awareness, well-being, dysphoria, and physical health (see Table 3). For our preregistered analysis plan for Study 2, see https://osf.io/vyxjn/?view_only=ead5f3c5013546cdbe9626184c73acd9.

Results/Discussion
We focus here on results that are in line with the research questions described above and consistent across the two studies. When asked whether they could recall a recent time when they were unable to stop using social media even when they wanted to (see Table 2, Q1), 55.7% of participants in Study 1 and 63.7% in Study 2 responded ‘yes’. These participants (i.e., the unable group) reported experiencing feelings of compulsion more often than did participants who could not recall a time when they were unable to stop (i.e., the able group). In addition, participants in the unable group were more likely to interpret these feelings as indicating that there was nothing they could really do to stop using social media (see Table 4); and, endorsement of this interpretation was positively associated with emotion dysregulation (see Table 5). When participants were asked how they make sense of this feeling (see Table 2, Q6), our thematic coding of their open-ended responses indicated considerable variability in the extent to which they noticed this feeling and in how they interpreted it (e.g., as a signal to re-evaluate using social media vs. as a sign of personal failure). In sum, our findings suggest that feelings of compulsion may play an important role in how young adults regulate self-control conflicts when using social media.

Authors

• Sinwoo Bae, Boston College

• David B. Miele, Boston College