A new study has found evidence that the link between depression and social anxiety on one hand and problematic TikTok use on the other was achieved through distress intolerance. Boredom proneness played no significant role in this link. The study was published in Computers in Human Behavior.
TikTok is a video platform used widely across the world. Since it was released in 2016, the platform has reached more than a billion monthly active users worldwide. TikTok allows its users to watch, share, comment on, and create short videos and live streams. One of the key properties of TikTok is that it learns about users’ content preferences and customizes their feeds automatically, thereby enhancing users’ attention to it.
With the rapid growth of its use, concern emerged about problematic use of TikTok, a specific form of general problematic social media use. Problematic use of social media involves addiction-like symptoms, such as loss of control over social media use, psychological withdrawal without access to social media, craving for use, and usage despite the disturbance of daily life that happens as a consequence.
Depression and social anxiety are two of the most prominent psychological factors that increase the severity of problematic social media use. However, the psychological mechanisms through which this increase in severity is achieved has not been sufficiently studied.
Proneness to boredom and distress intolerance have been proposed as elements of this mechanism. Boredom proneness is a tendency to experience boredom, reflecting an inability to regulate attention and engage in meaningful activity. Distress intolerance is the perceived inability to withstand distressful feelings.
Study author Nisha Yao and her colleagues wanted to investigate possible psychological paths through which depression and social anxiety exerted effects on the severity of problematic TikTok use. They focused on the possible mediating role of distress intolerance and boredom proneness. Their expectation was that higher levels of depression and social anxiety would lead to higher levels of distress intolerance and boredom proneness. These would, in turn, lead to higher severity of problematic TikTok use symptoms.
The researchers recruited 1,428 Chinese individuals through Credamo. Prospective participants were included in the study if they owned a TikTok account, reported using it at least several times a week, and that it is their most used video platform. 829 participants were adults at the time of the initial data collection and researchers only analyzed data from these participants. These adult users were also invited to complete the same set of assessments 2 months later. 87% of them provided the data in the second assessment.
Participants completed assessments of depression (the Patient Health Questionnaire-9), social anxiety (the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale), boredom proneness (the Boredom Proneness Scale), distress intolerance (the Distress Intolerance Scale), TikTok use (a question to indicate their daily TikTok use time), and problematic TikTok use (the Smartphone Addiction Scale-Short Version was adapted to be about problematic TikTok use).
Results showed that measured factors were relatively stable and did not change between two data collection time points. The only exception was distress intolerance, which was somewhat lower on average at the second time point compared to the start of the study. Median use of TikTok, as reported by participants was 1.5-2 hours per day. Participants watched videos and live streams on TikTok much more frequently than making videos themselves.
Participants who were younger, less educated, and who spent more time on TikTok had higher severity of problematic TikTok use. Participants who watched videos more than live streams tended to have more severe problematic use symptoms.
A test of the statistical model showed that it is possible that depression and social anxiety exerted effects on both boredom proneness and distress intolerance. However, these effects transferred to the severity of problematic TikTok use symptoms only through distress intolerance, and not through boredom proneness.
“The current results suggest that depression and social anxiety would negatively affect emotion processing and reduce distress tolerance. It is likely that individuals who are intolerant of distress would feel an urge to reduce distress as quickly as possible, as they find distressful feelings unbearable and believe that they cannot effectively cope with distress. This urge to rapidly avoid or alleviate distress then leads to excessive or problematic use of TikTok to cope with distress,” the study authors conclude.
The study sheds light on psychological underpinnings of problematic TikTok use. However, it also has limitations that need to be taken into account. Notably, the study participants were recruited through an online survey provider. Results on a sample more representative of the general population might not be the same. Additionally, only data on adult users were analyzed. The findings might be different in younger users.
The study, “Depression and social anxiety in relation to problematic TikTok use severity: The mediating role of boredom proneness and distress intolerance”, was authored by Nisha Yao, Jing Chen, Siyuan Huang, Christian Montag, and Jon D. Elhai.
