Is social media an ‘addiction’? This study looked at bodily responses while scrolling Instagram

The typical adult in the UK spends nearly two hours on social media per day. And for younger users, this can easily be up to five hours. The likes of Instagram or TikTok seem to draw us into their ever-changing feeds and it’s difficult to tear ourselves away from these platforms.

Now our latest study shows that even our body reflects a state of being glued to the screen when we are on social media.

We asked 54 young adults to browse their Instagram on their phone for 15 minutes as they would normally do in their daily life. However, in our study we had attached electrodes to their chest and fingers that allowed us to record their heart rate and “skin conductance”, which is an indicator of sweating. Psychologists can use these physiological markers to infer subtle mental states and emotions. We also added a control condition where our participants read a news article on their phone, just before they logged onto Instagram.

What we found was that, relative to the news reading condition, scrolling away on Instagram led to a marked slowing of participants’ heart rate while, at the same time, increasing their sweating response.

From other research we know that such a pattern of bodily responses shows that someone’s attention is fully absorbed...

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