Austin Ellis

Method Proposal Outlook

Introduction:

Challenges with attentional control and subsequent perseverative cognitions may

contribute to social media addiction tendencies. The purpose of this study is to assess

whether theories regarding attentional control and rumination help explain social

media addiction tendencies in a college-aged sample. The three scales of

measurement that will be used for the study will be the impaired disengagement task,

rumination measure, and the social media addiction measure.

Social media use is exploding. While beneficial, there are drawbacks. Many young

people struggle with consequences of overuse (low self esteem, depression, anxiety,

etc). Thus, we need to get a grasp of the mechanisms underlying social media

obsessions so as to best intervene. Cognitive control challenges may be one

mechanism that we can target. The trials themselves will begin both on the computer

screens and afterwards in the form of experimentation as it pertains to addiction

coupled with rumination (Tutgun-Ünal & Deniz., 2015). The research problem at

hand here will be about biases in attention and subsequent perseverative cognitions

which may contribute to social media addition tendencies. The research problem will

also tie into how these attention biases are also the cause of rumination, attentional

control, and what consequences follow afterwards. The method will be using the

SONA system to pull participants and two units of measure to mark social media

usage as it relates to rumination. Planned procedure involves informed consent for

participants and whether or not the impaired disengagement hypothesis can be applied

to a social media addiction context. We will discuss how this model will tie into its
theoretical and practical implications and the directions/results of rumination and

attention.

Literature Review:

Particularly preceding any sort of exposure to social media content and how

the control difficulty will be a challenge for mitigating overexposure to social media

content and usage.

Regarding attentional difficulties in addiction, there are a wide variety of biases and

issues that can crop up for people in recovery who suffer from attention-related

difficulties. These issues include learning and the ability to retain information,

problems with thinking clearly, and paying attention (D’Souza., 2019). Attentional

difficulties also play a role in addiction due to impaired prefrontal cortical

disengagement which is also linked to a heightened sense of impulsivity, another form

of impairment that also further amplifies risk factors for addiction (Le et al., 2021).

Rumination also plays a key role in addiction as rumination not only creates an inherit

disconnect from reality, but also takes people who suffer from compulsive and

obsessive addictions out of the present moment and thus shifts both focus and

attention upon distractions instead. Rumination also fosters a sense of inadequacy in

the form of obsessive thinking, deep thinking, and social comparison, which has

tendencies of predicting social media usage/addiction significantly (Onat Kocabıyık,

2021). All of which include heightened forms of anxiety, depression, an increase in

stress and cortisol levels, and also comparing oneself to the lifestyle of others on

social media regarding social comparisons and outcomes. Rumination can also create

not only low self esteem issues, but also can lower one’s confidence in both oneself

and others (Lin et al., 2016).

only affect attention, but can also become obsessive as well. estimated 10% or well

over 33 million mericans have some type of social media addiction. Over 40 percent

of show signs of social media addiction, and well over 70% of teens and young adults

in the United States have a social media addiction. Particularly if over two hours a

day is spent upon social media usage. . These consequences include social

comparisons to other people on social media, the feeling of missing out (also known

as FOMO), and also leads to lower self-esteem issues and even the likes of poor body

image in terms of how one views oneself.

In relation to this concept, the impaired disengagement hypothesis proposes

that people who have difficulties with effective disengagement have issues and

problems detaching from negative emotions and thoughts. These then produce an

obsession with persistent, ruminating thoughts that can become obsessive in and of

itself over time. The impaired disengagement hypothesis has also been linked with

other disorders such as depression, impaired cognitive/attentional control, and also

with conflict signaling (Jose M Salguero, et al., 2021) due to obsessive, time-

absorbing use of social media interaction. The model in and of itself has yet to be

applied to a social media context, but at the same exact time, the evidence is starting

to show that the framework between rumination/attentional issues and social media

usage, are linked to one another (Yang et al., 2019). In other words, attention, as it

relates to rumination, will be the goal objective in terms of predicting social media

addiction tendencies.

As a general overview, the impaired disengagement hypothesis poses that individuals

who have difficulties with exercising attentional control in response to negative and

pervasive thoughts are more than likely to experience constant rumination (Koster et
al., 2011). This proposal hypothesis basically means that if one is not successful in

disengaging from negative thoughts and emotions, persistent rumination is birthed

and can be an accurate precursor to and for addiction. This can relate to addiction

both heavily and strongly by producing depressive symptoms for people who are

deeply engaged in addiction despite negative and recurring consequences as well as

hijacking one’s mental health and cognitive wellness. Rumination plays a significant

and major role as it pertains to attention and cognitive faculties as it relates to social

media addiction, regarding two key elements. These are reflection and brooding.

Reflective aspects occurs when subjects are looking back upon situations, thinking

about them over and over again, and process the emotions that transpire with such

events while viewing the lives of others on social media. Brooding is also coupled

with this in that negative mood, attentional, and cognitive consequences and their

thoughts are more intensive-focused regarding situations in the past and present.

The attentional disengagement hypothesis, as stated before, is tied into depression in a

variety of cognitive and attentional ways. Firstly, the attentional disengagement

hypothesis states that subjects have a difficult time disengaging from activities that

have the potential and capacity to produce rumination as a by-product and an off-

shoot of a consistent, persistent habit of negative thinking. Second, the depressive

symptoms in and of themselves are an off-shoot of negative thinking that is difficult

to disengage from, which will thus produce depressive-like symptoms due to bad

mood as it pertains to the nature and capacity of the negative thoughts at their root.

Lastly, this model can be used to measure the overall view of rumination, attentional

control as it relates to cognition and its consequences, and depression towards the

subjects who engage actively in social media usage.

he study will measure how long rumination will play a major role as it pertains to

attentional control fused into social media addiction. he rumination period which will

be geared towards social media addiction and how strong the proclivity for said

addiction will last. The study will present itself in the form of higher rumination

stimuli in which more stimuli means more compulsive and obsessive social media

addiction overuse with the ultimate end result predicting not only higher social media

use, but also the negative consequences that comes with such deep rumination on

social media overuse. From a hypothesis test standpoint in terms of what to test and

measure, the results would focus only on three things as it pertains to this study:

Attentional disengagement (time to look away from social media relevant content),

general rumination tendencies, and social media addiction tendencies. (Yaroslavsky et

al., 2019). The finalization of the test will also measure how impaired disengagement

attachment is linked to both social media addiction and its by-product rumination.

Participants And Measures:

In terms of overall participation, a grand total of 120 participants will be extracted in

order to conduct and run tests on the hypothesis study at hand. The measuring system

that will be used to generate a pool of participants for the study will be what is called

SONA. The SONA system will pull participants based upon their age, gender,

education level, and also based upon their amount of social media usage. The SONA

system will also pull undergraduate participants from the age ranges of 18 years old

and up. A power analysis was conducted as a mediation method for the study, called

the Monte Carlo Power Analysis (Schoemann, et al., 2017).

Impaired Disengagement:
The general overview of impaired disengagement, as it relates to addiction and

rumination, is that people who ruminate, not only tend to increase their risk for

impaired attentional control, but also the conflict signaling that comes along with it.

This also not only increases risks for depression, but also for other factors and

consequences that come along with it as it relates to negative emotional outcomes

(Koster et al., 2011). This also ultimately creates incompatible responses in attention

and other forms of visual impairment. Conflict signaling is also affected because

when rumination takes over, coupled with addictive tendencies, this raises the

probability that these states that are affected by rumination will alter monitoring of

both conflicts and errors involved (Salguero et al., 2021). The conflict-signaling

process, within the context of impaired disengagement, also is both governed and

registered by a monitoring system which filters attentional changes and their affective

states.

Measures Section:

The first measure to look at for the study is the impaired disengagement task. For the

current study, the measures section will look at undergraduate students of all

backgrounds for attentional control difficulties as it ties into rumination. The students

themselves will be tested to see if, in the form of a prediction, that poor attentional

control will predict higher social media addiction tendencies and that this relationship

will be mediated by enhanced ruminative tendencies. The impaired disengagement

model will also be placed upon students as a test to see if addictive tendencies for

social media will be there to affect their attention/rumination levels or not. Overall,

the impaired disengagement model has ties to depression as a ruminative quality, but

at the same exact time, the model itself has logical connections to other forms of

problematic psychological conditions regarding cognitive antecedents.

Social Media Addiction Scale. The Social Media Addiction Scale is an instrumental

measure that measures participants and subjects overall social media usage and

addiction. The Social Media Addiction Scale will also measure participants by a 5

point Likert Scale from questionnaires consisting of items in which were adapted

from an Internet Addiction Test. The Social Media Addiction Scale also measures

problematic and compulsive internet usage as well as overall dependence on social

media platforms to see what changes and impacts there are upon participants who

interject themselves into it. Six total items are drawn into the scale that measures its

subject in ratings: 1. Salience, 2. Tolerance. 3. Mood Modification. 4. Relapse. 5.

Withdrawal. And 6. Conflict. This will also be a non-clinical sample for the

participants involved, meaning subjects won’t be diagnosed for disorders, but

moreover for trends of symptoms in a community sample.

. The rumination response scale is a questionnaire system that self-reports, through

participants and subjects involved, negative effects and mood as it relates to cognitive

faculties. The Rumination Response Scale will also measure the participants via a

twenty-two item response system with three subscales that will be used to measure the

subjects which are depression, brooding, and reflection. The responses will also be

measured upon a four point Likert scale ranging from one (never) to 4 (always). The

scale not only measures depression in particular as it relates to rumination and

negative thoughts, but also measures how rumination is compulsively focused and

centered on attention as it relates to distress, its possible causes and consequences,

and social media use. Individual tendencies have also been assessed using this scale

for subjects who ruminate. This is measured by a higher score on the Likert scale
which is indicative of more participatory rumination for the overuse of social media

as it pertains to negative mood states (Southworth et al., 2016).

Procedure:

Participants provide informed consent, complete a brief demographics survey (that

includes familiarity with social media and general social media usage). Next,

participants will complete the impaired disengagement task via a computer, then they

will complete the social media addiction and rumination scales. Participants will then

be debriefed and thanked for their time. The whole procedure should take no more

than 30 minutes.

Discussion;

Prior to testing the main study hypotheses, I first examined whether

participants reaction times differed when shifting attention toward social media logs

(i.e., “engagement times”) vs. shifting attention away from social media logos (i.e.,

“disengagement times”). A paired-samples t-test revealed that participants took

slightly longer to disengage from social media logos, t(10) = 2.03, p = .07. Next,

Pearson correlations were conducted to assess the bivariate relationships between the

main variables of interest for the mediation model. Here, there was a 0.25 relationship

between disengagement times and social media addiction scores, a 0.14 relationship

between disengagement times and brooding, and a c’ = .001 relationship between

brooding and social media addiction scores. Finally, a mediation model was

conducted using the PROCESS macro in SPSS (Model 4; Hayes, 2018) testing for the

indirect effect of brooding on the relationship between disengagement times and

social media addiction scores. Results revealed no significant indirect effect of

brooding on the disengagement-social media addiction score relationship (XXX)

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