Instagram users are scrolling out of habit not addiction, study finds
Do you find yourself constantly catastrophizing on social media? You may be doing this out of habit, not addiction.
That’s according to research on 1,204 U.S. adults, which found that excessive social media use was not linked to symptoms associated with addiction, such as cravings, withdrawal symptoms, and continuing to use despite negative consequences.
However, psychologists have emphasized that social media is associated with negative consequences such as poor body image, anxiety, depression and low self-esteem.
“To label something as an addiction, it has to impair the functionality of our daily lives,” said chartered psychologist Dr Audrey Tang. Independent.
“But if we have normalized behaviors like checking our phone, responding immediately to notifications, or keeping notifications open, we are less likely to view these behaviors as a disorder.”
To find out whether we are truly addicted, Ian Anderson of the California Institute of Technology and Wendy Wood of the University of Southern California surveyed 380 US Instagram users, half of whom were women and whose average age was 44.
Participants described how addicted they were to Instagram and were assessed for signs of addictive use.
Study published in the journal Scientific ReportsIt found that although 18 percent of respondents admitted they were at least somewhat addicted to Instagram (5 percent largely agreed), only 2 percent showed signs of addiction.
The researchers then analyzed the language used in US news and media outlets between November 2021 and November 2024. They identified 4,383 articles that mentioned the phrase “social media addiction” and 50 articles that mentioned the phrase “social media habit.” This suggests that frequent social media use tends to be described as an addiction, and that this affects how users perceive their own social media use.
A second sample of 824 US adult Instagram users was asked to describe their social media use as an addiction. They found that participants subsequently associated their use with lower feelings of control over their use of Instagram and placed higher levels of blame on both themselves and the platform for overuse. The study authors suggest that we should use the term addiction more selectively in relation to social media.
Despite this, recent data shows that social media addiction is increasing; Almost half (48 per cent) of young people in Britain say they feel addicted to social media.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) found a “sharp increase” in problematic social media use by 280,000 young people in Canada, Central Asia and Europe.
Dr Tang considered the example of a child waking up in the middle of the night to use social media and suggested that these habits should be called addictions because it is “not a healthy behaviour”.
Chartered member of the British Psychological Society and co-chair of the cyberpsychology department, Dr. David Harley argued that a “habit”, especially “unconscious habits”, can still be harmful.
He argued that calling excessive social media use an addiction puts the blame on the individual, and claimed that social media companies designed these applications to “make money from your attention.”
“These habits are honed by technologies, so they’re not just naturally occurring habits, they’re conditioned habits,” he said. Independent.
Meta has been contacted for comment.
