Some people just can’t put their smartphones down, even if they want to. A large study with over 800 participants has now identified three psychological mechanisms behind this loss of control. The results of the team led by psychologist Matthias Brand show why those affected tick differently – and how therapies could help more specifically in the future.
Problematic Internet use is increasingly becoming a serious health problem in society. A team of researchers led by psychologist Matthias Brand therefore examined the underlying psychological mechanisms in more detail.
The scientists tested over 800 test subjects with standardized interviews, cognitive tasks and questionnaires. The aim was to understand the causes of the current and future loss of control when surfing, playing or shopping online.
Escape from stress online: When feelings control consumption
The study revealed three interconnected pathways that lead to problematic use. The first path is driven by feelings and rewards users for their actions.
People consume digital content to cope with their everyday stress and escape negative moods. This behavior creates a strong desire to go online again and again because the virtual world provides emotional relief.
Internet addiction: Why do we automatically turn to our smartphone?
The second mechanism describes the transition to pure habitual media use. Users would automatically access games or social networks on their devices without thinking.
This behavior aims to avoid negative emotions in the first place and create a distraction. A person’s fundamental attention deficit disorder or impulsivity plays a crucial role in this progressive automation.
Lack of Impulse Control: When quitting becomes impossible
The third way concerns cognitive control, i.e. the fundamental inability to finish an action in time. Those affected would have reduced executive functions, making it more difficult for them to regulate their own impulses.
As soon as they start consuming digital content, the necessary inhibitory control fails. You can no longer turn off the device you are using, even if you are actually pursuing this goal.
How therapies will specifically help with internet addiction in the future
All three psychological drives work together to explain over sixty percent of the measured symptoms among the participants. Even six months later, these mechanisms still proved to be reliable predictors of the usage behavior of the people examined. The researchers see these findings as having great potential for medical practice. This would allow future treatments to be tailored more precisely to the main problem of the affected patients.
Depending on which mechanism dominates, different therapeutic approaches are likely to help in practice in the future. Anyone who primarily uses the Internet to cope with stress could benefit from training in emotion regulation. However, if you lack inhibitory control, special training to strengthen impulse control would help. The team of authors led by Matthias Brand explained the therapeutic options:
Clinicians should systematically identify the key drivers of problematic Internet use among their patients and then select the optimal interventions to specifically target each pathway. This could be done, for example, by combining classic cognitive behavioral therapy with specific affective or cognitive training.
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