COURSE CODE : CCST 9076

Session 3: Are you addicted to social media?

Professor Shihui Feng

shihuife@[Link]

Academic Unit of Mathematics,

Science, and Technology
Faculty of Education
University of Hong Kong

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Last Week
● Evolution of social media
● Six-degree separation
● Four features of Social Media
○ User-generated content
○ Digital profile, Network transparency, relational ties, search and privacy
● Uses and Gratifications (UGT) Theory
● 3-day No Social Media Challenge!

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Session 3-Outline
● The “addiction” paradox
○ Get to know addiction
○ Reward pathway in the brain
● What is social media addiction?
○ Definitions
○ Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS)
○ Social media platforms: needs & addiction
● Dual System Theory
● Instant Gratification
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Session 3: Learning Outcomes

Understand Recognize Analyze Develop

the underlying The characteristics of Different behavioural patterns Awareness of social
mechanisms of addiction social media addiction in and possible stimulus of media addiction
different social media platforms

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TikTok is back online less than For sale: An iPhone with Bluesky replace X for scientists
15 hours after shutting down TikTok installed, $50,000

Bluesky’s science takeover: 70% of Nature

poll respondents use platform

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'Sadbait': Why algorithms, audiences and creators love to cry online

● Sadbait refers to content designed to attract user attention and

interaction through sad, melancholic, or dramatic themes.
● Examples include influencers filming themselves crying, AI-generated
tragic stories, or edited clips paired with sorrowful music (such as the
"Corecore" videos on TikTok).

● User reactions to sad content (whether genuine or ironic) drive further

promotion by algorithms.
● Even if the content is mocked or labeled as "cringe," its high level of
engagement is still seen as successful by algorithms.
● Sadbait is not only a form of emotional expression but also reflects
deeper societal issues such as class, gender, and race.

[Link]
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 Widespread phenomenon of ‘shares without clicks’ (SwoCs)

● SwoCs: Users share URLs without reading them, relying on superficial cues like headlines and
images, contributing to the spread of misinformation and extreme political content.

● Over 35 million Facebook posts from 2017-2020 revealed that 75% of shared links are "shares
without clicks" (SwoCs).

● SwoCs are based on heuristic processing (quick, surface-level decisions), leading to less factual
knowledge and a false sense of confidence.

● Polarized content, ideological alignment, and political affiliation increase SwoCs. SwoCs promote
misinformation and create a bandwagon effect, emphasizing the need for interventions to
encourage more intentional content engagement.

Sundar, S.S., Snyder, E.C., Liao, M. et al. Sharing without clicking on news in social [Link] Hum Behav 9, 156–168 (2025).
[Link]
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 “Phubbing”: the act of snubbing someone in a social setting by
Social Media & Addiction concentrating on one’s phone instead of talking to the person
directly.

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3-Day No Social Media Challenge Outcomes

● What is your outcome? Success/fail

● How hard was it for you to be abstinent from social media during the challenge?
● Do you think social media is essential for your life?
● Are you interested in taking the 3-day no social media challenge again?
● What do you think about the effects of social media addiction on your life?

Participate in the survey through the following link:

[Link]

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Get to Know “Addiction”

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Get to Know “Addiction”

● “An overwhelming involvement with any pursuit whatsoever that is harmful to

the addicted person and his or her society” (Alexander, 2008)
● Substance dependence
● “Behaviours performed with little or no control and having detrimental
consequences” (Starcevic, 2012)
● Compulsive behavior: continually repeat behaviors that we are trying not to
repeat

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Reward Pathway in the Brain

Pleasure stimulus Dopamine, produced in the ventral tegmental area (VTA)

Dopamine is transmitted to the other parts of the brain which

have dopamine receptors

Emotions, Body motor functions, attention & planning,

Formation of memories

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Reward Pathway in the Brain

Pleasure stimulus Dopamine, produced in the ventral tegmental area (VTA)

Dopamine is transmitted to the other parts of the brain which

have dopamine receptors
Continued pleasure

Emotions: ”I am feeling so happy” (reward)

Formation of memories: “let’s remember this experience”
Motor functions: “let’s do this again”
Attention & planning: “let’s focus on this”

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Reward Pathway in the Brain

● Different stimuli activate the reward pathway to different degrees

● A biologically driven process
● The “paradox”
Dopamine increases
Continued pleasure
Serotonin decreases Less likely to feel satiated

Want more

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relentless pursuit of pleasure leads to pain

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Criteria for behavioral
addiction
(Brown, 1993; Griffiths, 1996)

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Addiction Paradox
● Tolerance
○ Long-term stimulation can alter the brain chemistry
○ The brain can adapt to abnormally high levels of the related
neurochemicals
● Withdraw
○ Painful or unpleasant experience when a person cannot get access to the
stimulus
● Negative consequences have different impacts
● Emotional dependence, physical dependence

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Social Media Addiction

“Social Media addiction can be viewed as one form of Internet addiction, where
individuals exhibit a compulsion to use social media to excess” (Griffiths, 2000;
Starcevic, 2013).

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Social Media Addiction
“Social Media addiction can be viewed as one form of Internet addiction, where individuals
exhibit a compulsion to use social media to excess” (Griffiths, 2000; Starcevic, 2013).

● overly concerned about social media

● uncontrollable urge to log on to and use social media

● Occuring over a long period of time

● Undergoes a psychological process

(Andreassen & Pallesen, 2014; Zhang et al., 2019 )

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Are you Addicted to Social Media?

● It is shown that college students are more likely to become addicted as the
intensity of social media use increases (Błachnio et al., 2016; Brailovskaia et al.,
2018, Busalim et al., 2019).

● Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS), consists of six items: 1. Salience 2.
Mood modification 3. Tolerance, 4. Withdrawal symptoms, 5. Conflict ( functional
impairment) and 6. Relapse (loss of control).

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Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale

1. You spend a lot of time thinking about social media or planning how to use it.
2. You feel an urge to use social media more and more.
3. You use social media in order to forget about personal problems.
4. You have tried to cut down on the use of social media without success.
5. You become restless or troubled if you are prohibited from using social media.
6. You use social media so much that it has had a negative impact on your job/studies.

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 Are You Addicted
to Social Media?

Step 1 - Take the BSMAS Test

[Link]
media-addiction-scale

Step 2 - Submit your result

enter code: 4949 3042
[Link]
According to the analysis by Meng et al.(2022), the global pooled
prevalence of social media addiction was found to be
17.42% (95% CI, 12.42-23.89).

According to research from the University of Michigan,

an estimated 210 million people worldwide suffer from
addiction to social media and the internet.

Social media addiction statistics (2025): [Link]

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 Red Flags:
● “Spending the majority of your time engaging in the behavior, thinking about or arranging to engage
in the behavior, or recovering from the effects”
● “Becoming dependent on the behavior as a way to cope with emotions and to "feel normal””
● “Continuing despite physical and/or mental harm”
● “Having trouble cutting back despite wanting to stop”
● “Neglecting work, school, or family to engage in the behavior more often”
● “Experiencing symptoms of withdrawal (for example, depression or irritability) when trying to stop”
● “Minimizing or hiding the extent of the problem”

(Alavi et al., 2012)

source: [Link]

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“the habits that have gotten out of control”

● “habitual media use involves repeated use of a medium or platform, motivations that cause, or in
the past led to repeated use, and some feelings of inability to limit usage” (Vishwanath, 2015)
● consumption frequency, gratifications, and automaticity
● “ adolescents who, on average, used social media more automatically than their peers also
reported more task delay than their peers (between-person)” (Meier et al., 2023)
● context dependent

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Dual System Theory
● Reflective system
○ slower, deliberate, conscious, effortful
○ cognitive evaluation of the current situation to inform desired behavioral
○ Outcome <—> Response Keith Stanovich
● Reflexive system
○ fast, impulsive, intuitive, reactive, automatic
○ “combines affective and cognitive impulses to prompt an instantaneous
● behavioral response” (Strack & Deutsch, 2004; Turel et al., 2011)
○ Stimulus —> Response

Daniel Kahneman
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Dual System Theory & Social Media Addiction

● Which type of thinking system is associated with the manifestation of habits in SNS?
○ Fast, and activated automatically, response to relevant cues
○ habitual tendency to respond to the stimuli
○ less attention to the conditions surrounding the response behavior

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Dual System Theory & Social Media Addiction

● Which type of thinking system is associated with the manifestation of habits in SNS?
○ Fast, and activated automatically, response to relevant cues
○ habitual tendency to respond to the stimuli
○ less attention to the conditions surrounding the response behavior

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Dual System Theory & Social Media Addiction

● “the reflective system will trigger the need to consider the appropriateness of responding to the
stimuli (or exhibiting the habitual behavior) and act accordingly in favor of the higher order goal
(e.g., to succeed in school in case of messages received during class time). “ (Turel et al., 2011 )

● The development of social media addiction symptom is associated with users' inability to control
their automatic impulsion to use those systems (Turel & Qahri-Saremi, 2016)

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Dual System Theory & Social Media Addiction

● Goal-directed control
○ Outcome <—> Response
○ Sensitive to the contingency degradation or outcome devaluation

● Habit
○ Stimulus —> Response
○ The response could persist even if the outcome is undesired

● Habits can be embedded in sequences of goal-directed actions (Dezfouli & Balleine, 2012)

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Instant Gratification
● the desire to experience pleasure or fulfillment without
delay or deferment
● Short-term rewards VS long-term rewards
● Impulsive choices or preferences for short-term
rewards result from the emotion-related parts of the
brain winning out over the abstract-reasoning parts.
● The dopamine-related brain areas dominated
short-term choices among the study subjects

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Social media addiction & Brain

● “technology-related “addictions” share some neural features with substance and gambling
addictions, but more importantly they also differ from such addictions in their brain etiology
and possibly pathogenesis, as related to abnormal functioning of the inhibitory-control brain
system” (Turel et al., 2014)

● “While the activation of the amygdala-striatal (impulsive) brain system was positively
associated with one's Facebook “addiction” score (i.e., the level of addiction-like symptoms
presented), there was no association between this score and activation of the prefrontal
cortex (inhibition) brain system” (Turel et al., 2014)

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Social media addiction & Brain
● “social media checking behaviors in early adolescence may be associated with changes in the
brain’s sensitivity to social rewards and punishments” (Maza, et al., 2023)

● “We found that 12-year-old adolescents showed different neural patterns based on their
socialmedia checking behavior. While participants with habitual checking behaviors demonstrated
hypoactivation of the amygdala, PI, VS, and DLPFC in response to anticipation of social feedback,
those with nonhabitual behaviors demonstrated hyperactivation in these same brain regions.
Interestingly, these patterns diverged across development, with those with habitual behaviors
showing longitudinal increases in activation in these regions and those with nonhabitual behaviors
showing longitudinal decreases in activation”. (Maza, et al., 2023)

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Limitations of Existing Studies

Andrew Przybylski (2019), a senior research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, argued that most
existing studies on social media's effects are…

1. Too small to carry a lot of statistical power;

2. Examples of “correlation, not causation”;
3. A result of confirmation bias.

As UNICEF points out that claims that the brain is affected by technology needs to be examined more
carefully and further investigated. Some criticize the notion of “social media addiction” as an example of
“overpathologizing”.

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Why is social media addictive?
The following sessions….

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Key Concepts of Session 3

● Reward pathway in the brain

● Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale

● Dual System Theory

● Instant Gratification

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Attendance

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References
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Alabi, O. F. (2012). A survey of Facebook addiction level among selected Nigerian University undergraduates. New Media and Mass Communication, 10, 70–80.
Alavi SS, Ferdosi M, Jannatifard F, Eslami M, Alaghemandan H, Setare M. (2012) Behavioral addiction versus substance addiction: Correspondence of psychiatric and psychological views. Int J Prev Med.
3(4):290–294.
Andreassen, C. S., & Pallesen, S. (2014). Social network site addiction-an overview. Current pharmaceutical design, 20(25), 4053-4061.
Alexander, BK. (2008). The Globalisation of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit. New York: Oxford University Press.
Brailovskaia, J., Schillack, H., & Margraf, J. (2018). Facebook addiction disorder in Germany. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 21(7), 450–456.
Busalim, A. H., Masrom, M., & Zakaria, W. N. B. W. (2019). The impact of facebook addiction and self-esteem on students’ academic performance: A multi-group analysis. Computers & Education, 142, 103651.
Błachnio, A., Przepiorka, A., & Rudnicka, P. (2016). Narcissism and self-esteem as predictors of dimensions of Facebook use. Personality and Individual Differences, 90, 296–301.
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