Depressive inclinations mediate the association between personality (neuroticism/conscientiousness) and TikTok Use Disorder tendencies, 2024

[Mij]

Abstract
Background
We introduce a novel measure for assessing TikTok overuse, called the TikTok Use Disorder-Questionnaire (TTUD-Q). As part of ongoing investigations into the suitability of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) framework for diagnosing Gaming Disorder in the context of social media overuse, we developed this questionnaire by adapting the WHO framework, replacing the term “gaming” with “TikTok use”.

Methods
In order to address this question, we investigated the psychometric properties of the newly designed TTUD-Q and assessed its associations with the BFI-10 (assessing the Big Five of Personality) and the PHQ-8 (assessing depressive tendencies).

Results
In this study, involving a final sample of 378 participants, we observed that higher levels of neuroticism were linked to greater tendencies toward TikTok Use Disorder (TTUD). Furthermore, we identified that this association was mediated by depressive tendencies. Similar trends emerged when investigating the relationship between lower levels of conscientiousness and higher TTUD tendencies, with depressive tendencies once again serving as a mediator.

Discussion
Our research sets the foundation for future studies that should delve deeper into examining individual differences in TTUD using the WHO framework originally designed for Gaming Disorder.

https://bmcpsychology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40359-024-01541-y

 

[Mij]

TikTok cats light up my day.

 

[duncan]

TikTok Use Disorder-Questionnaire (TTUD-Q)

That's just embarrassing.

 

[CRG]

I'm too neurotic to use Tik-Tok

 

[CRG]

That TTDU-Q - Google translation from German:

The questions below relate to your TikTok activity over the past year (more precisely, based on the last twelve months). Please indicate how frequently following problems on average over the last twelve months up to today days occurred.

1. I've had trouble controlling my TikTok activity.

2. I give TikTok activities increasing priority over other life interests and assigned daily activities.

3. I continued to engage in TikTok activities despite negative consequences arose (e.g. in a relationship, studies or job).

4. I have significant issues in my life because of the strength of my TikTok Experience activities.

 

[Sean]

No doubt there will soon be a 'disorder' for those of us who don't have an account on any of these sites (Tik-Tok, Xitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit,...), which will be associated with something declared by an expert to be a psychosocial pathology.

 

[Kitty]

The questions below relate to your TikTok activity over the past year (more precisely, based on the last twelve months). Please indicate how frequently following problems on average over the last twelve months up to today days occurred.

Funny that no one diagnosed me with a music disorder when I was young, despite spending all my time and money on it and throwing sickies to attend gigs.

My housemate didn't have a rugby disorder, despite losing jobs for turning up with black eyes or missing teeth after playing, or hungover after winning.

 

[rvallee]

Ah, yes, the old "everything I don't like is bad" thing. People used to say the same thing about reading newspapers and women riding bicycles.

What's next, a questionnaire to assess the neurotic, or whatever no one cares, tendencies of people inclined to overuse BS questionnaires and interpret them however they feel like? With a primary outcome of "how many inkblots can you fit on a Meyers-Briggs questionnaire and how they relate to your mother's astrological homeopathic quotient?"

 

[SNT Gatchaman]

See also Guardian: Young people becoming less happy than older generations, research shows

America’s top doctor says governments’ failure to better regulate social media is ‘insane’

Nothing to do with housing crisis, extreme wealth inequality, environmental destruction etc etc.

Edit: Huh, the article actually even says this a little lower down —

Earlier this month a majority of British teenagers told pollsters they expect their lives to be worse than the previous generation.

The report does not reveal the causes of the changes, but they come amid increasing concern at the impact of rising social media use, income inequalities, the housing crisis, and fears about war and climate change on the happiness of children and young people.

 

[Sean]

Any young person who is not seriously concerned about the future that the older generations have left them is delusional.

 

[rvallee]

See also Guardian: Young people becoming less happy than older generations, research shows



Nothing to do with housing crisis, extreme wealth inequality, environmental destruction etc etc.

Edit: Huh, the article actually even says this a little lower down —

Blaming social media is such a cheap cop-out and it makes no sense. It doesn't even appear like they asked why. Generally when people do it's because they are better-informed than previous generations, and that's just the same old nonsense blaming newspapers and books. Before that it was probably papyrus or stone tablets.

Do they even know what they're asking for here? What does "regulating" social media even mean?

He called for legislation “now” to reduce harms to young people from social media including limiting or eliminating features such as like buttons and infinite scrolling.

Because this is not regulating social media, it's just dumb and will never happen.

There is a well-known saying about this:

Hard times create strong people, strong people create good times, good times create weak people, and weak people create hard times

And we are currently in a weird phase of hard times and weak people in charge, where medicine has become self-obsessed over getting people to be child-like worry-free "mindful", focused on "therapeutic recreation" and other nonsense that completely ignore and neglect real problems, making everything unnecessarily harder, especially in the future while literally spreading the lie that infectious diseases are good for you.

Sane youth see this and see plainly that the people in charge don't know their ass from a hole in the ground, like seeing the captain of your ship drunk out of his mind and aiming for the iceberg.

Not to mention the completely mishandled pandemic that killed millions, disabled tens of millions, and has basically been met with a "Eva Braun in the bunker" reaction, getting people to dance and drink merrily, from the same profession that has seemingly fallen for pseudoscience worse than any before in history.

Youth better be worried about the future. Being informed about it is realistic and sane.

 

[Kitty]

What does "regulating" social media even mean?

As far as I can see, it means regulating kids. By people who've forgotten that normal, obsessive kids have a habit of growing into normal, wised-up adults. It'll always be dangerous to be young and inexperienced, whether the harm is from world wars, institutional abuse cultures, or online predators.

I'll wager £5 and a jam doughnut that some of the same people maundering on about regulating social media think it's justifiable to criminalise young people protesting about credible threats to their future, because they're organised, gobby, and an inconvenience. (ETA: presumably they've forgotten the 1960s and 70s.)

 

[Sean]

Before that it was probably papyrus or stone tablets.

It's the written word, printing press, radio, movies, TV, videos, internet, social media.

 

[Arnie Pye]

No doubt there will soon be a 'disorder' for those of us who don't have an account on any of these sites (Tik-Tok, Xitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit,...), which will be associated with something declared by an expert to be a psychosocial pathology.

I don't remember the circumstances now, but I do remember telling a doctor once that I didn't have a Facebook account and their response was "Why not?".

 

[Peter T]

It's the written word, printing press, radio, movies, TV, videos, internet, social media.

For a good while it was reading novels. When I was a child I knew several adults who had not been permitted to read any fiction books before teatime when children. And more recently I knew families where reading novels was not permitted on the Sabbath.

 

[NelliePledge]

I suggest all CBT “researchers” immediately turn their attention to the urgent issue of social media addiction where their abilities can be put to much better use than trying to reprogramme chronically ill people.

 

[rvallee]

I suggest all CBT “researchers” immediately turn their attention to the urgent issue of social media addiction where their abilities can be put to much better use than trying to reprogramme chronically ill people.

Just as ineffective at it, but largely harmless? I like it.

 

[SNT Gatchaman]

Related — Nature Book Reviews: The great rewiring: is social media really behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness?
Candice Odgers

Reviewing "The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness" Jonathan Haidt (2024)

Two things need to be said after reading The Anxious Generation. First, this book is going to sell a lot of copies, because Jonathan Haidt is telling a scary story about children’s development that many parents are primed to believe. Second, the book’s repeated suggestion that digital technologies are rewiring our children’s brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness is not supported by science. Worse, the bold proposal that social media is to blame might distract us from effectively responding to the real causes of the current mental-health crisis in young people.

Hundreds of researchers, myself included, have searched for the kind of large effects suggested by Haidt. Our efforts have produced a mix of no, small and mixed associations. Most data are correlative. When associations over time are found, they suggest not that social-media use predicts or causes depression, but that young people who already have mental-health problems use such platforms more often or in different ways from their healthy peers.

These are not just our data or my opinion. Several meta-analyses and systematic reviews converge on the same message. An analysis done in 72 countries shows no consistent or measurable associations between well-being and the roll-out of social media globally. Moreover, findings from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, the largest long-term study of adolescent brain development in the United States, has found no evidence of drastic changes associated with digital-technology use. Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University, is a gifted storyteller, but his tale is currently one searching for evidence.

Two things can be independently true about social media. First, that there is no evidence that using these platforms is rewiring children’s brains or driving an epidemic of mental illness. Second, that considerable reforms to these platforms are required, given how much time young people spend on them. Many of Haidt’s solutions for parents, adolescents, educators and big technology firms are reasonable, including stricter content-moderation policies and requiring companies to take user age into account when designing platforms and algorithms. Others, such as age-based restrictions and bans on mobile devices, are unlikely to be effective in practice — or worse, could backfire given what we know about adolescent behaviour.

A third truth is that we have a generation in crisis and in desperate need of the best of what science and evidence-based solutions can offer. Unfortunately, our time is being spent telling stories that are unsupported by research and that do little to support young people who need, and deserve, more.