Poster #131 - Neurophysiological Emotion Regulation Mediates the Link Between Digital Media Use and Anxiety Symptoms in Adolescents

• In Event: Poster Session 17

Abstract

Adolescence is a period of profound biological and social-emotional development during which anxiety symptoms commonly emerge. Over the past several decades, the social world of teens has been transformed by pervasive digital media use (DMU; e.g., social media, messaging apps), highlighting the urgent need to clarify links between DMU and mental health (Keles et al., 2020). Prior work (Babkirk et al., 2016) suggests that those with emotion regulation (ER) vulnerabilities may prefer DMU to communicate emotions, as digital platforms offer greater controllability in comparison to face-to-face (FtF) contexts. The maturation of frontal-subcortical circuitry underlying emotion regulation (ER) may make adolescents especially vulnerable to the detrimental effects of DMU.
The current study leveraged an emerging neural index of ER, delta beta coupling (DBC), which captures cortical-subcortical coherence at rest (e.g., Knyazev et al., 2006; Phelps et al., 2016). Relatively high DBC may reflect exaggerated top-down control of emotional systems since it has been associated with temperamental risk for anxiety in children (Poole et al., 2020). Youth showing this neural ‘over-control’, as well as those reporting elevated concern about exerting control over their feelings and behavior, may prefer DMU v FtF contexts to compensate for social discomfort, which in turn may contribute to anxiety symptoms.
We test mechanistic links among DMU preferences, neurophysiological ER, control concern, and anxiety symptoms with a partial sample [N = 44; 13 – 16 years old; Mage = 13.92, SD = 0.70; 24 female; 80% White, 2% Black/African-American, 16% more than one race, 2% Hispanic/Latino] from Time 1 of an ongoing longitudinal study. Youth completed a 6-minute baseline EEG task and self-reported their anxiety symptoms (SCARED; Birmaher et al., 1997), control concern (CASI; Silverman et al., 1999), and preferences for DMU vs FtF to communicate emotions (SMCQ; Babkirk et al., 2016). DBC was quantified as the absolute value of the residual score of delta (1-4Hz) and beta (13-25Hz) band power, averaged across frontal (F3/Fz/F4), central (C3/Cz/C4), and parietal (P3/Pz/P4) sites (Myruski et al., 2022). This score was then reversed such that greater values indicated greater DBC. Serial mediation analyses were conducted with DMU vs FtF preference as the predictor, DBC as moderator 1, control concern as moderator 2, and total anxiety symptoms as the outcome.
A greater DMU vs FtF emotion communication preference predicted greater anxiety symptoms [b=.28, t(43)=2.28, p=.028]. As expected, this effect was serially mediated by DBC and control concern (Figure 1). The indirect pathway was significant (bindirect=.08, t=1.83, p=.037, LLCI=.01, ULCI=.18), and fully accounted for the overall impact of DMU preference on anxiety with the direct effect being non-significant (bdirect= .17, t = 1.49, p = .145). This suggests that DMU may contribute to elevated anxiety via ER vulnerabilities, particularly neural regulatory imbalance weighted toward over-control, and exaggerated concern about being in control. Findings from the full T1 sample (N = 80) will be available by the conference date and implications for the mechanistic DMU-ER-anxiety link in youth will be discussed.

Authors

• Sarah Myruski, Pennsylvania State University, University Park
  Presenting Author

• Kristin A. Buss, Pennsylvania State University, University Park