Doomscrolling and social media addiction in adolescents: a two-wave longitudinal study

In recent years, various traumatic events such as pandemics, earthquakes, wars, and migration have occurred worldwide. Negative news and content related to these events can be easily accessed on social media, leading to the concept of doomscrolling. Doomscrolling is a recent phenomenon in mental health research and has not yet been sufficiently studied. Therefore, in this study, the longitudinal relationship between social media addiction and doomscrolling was examined. In this study, data were collected at two time points, time 1 (T1) and time 2 (T2), separated by a two-month interval. The study sample comprised 301 adolescents (48.5% female; 51.5% male) from 20 cities in Turkey. Participants were aged 12 to 19 (Mage = 15.55, SD = 1.09). The study employed a Cross-lagged path analytic model for the analysis. The analyses revealed positive and significant relationships between social media addiction and doomscrolling. It was concluded that at T1, addiction to social media had a positive correlation with doomscrolling at T2. Furthermore, the analysis revealed that social media addiction at T1 had a positive correlation with social media addiction at T2. However, the study found that engaging in doomscrolling at T1 did not significantly predict the development of social media addiction at T2. In conclusion, adolescents' social media addiction levels increase the risk of doomscrolling. These results demonstrate the importance of interventions that include social media addiction in the prevention and treatment of doomscrolling. Mental health professionals can provide interventions that include healthy social media use skills in adolescents to prevent doomscrolling.