The role of desire thinking in the problematic use of social networking sites among adults

Abstract

The problematic use of social networking sites (SNS) is associated with several psychiatric disorders. This behavior closely resembles addiction in terms of neurological basis and behavioral patterns. Nevertheless, successful intervention strategies and the etiology of problematic SNS use are not yet thoroughly investigated. We aimed to study whether desire thinking is associated with problematic SNS use among adults when controlling for some confounders, including boredom, affect, and impulsivity. With the help of convenience sampling, we enrolled 546 Turkish adults in this study to whom we administered a sociodemographic form, the Social Media Addiction Scale (SMAS), the Leisure Boredom Scale (LBS), the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS-11), and the Desire Thinking Questionnaire (DTQ). To explore the association between the variables, we performed Pearson correlational and hierarchical regression analyses. The results showed that higher scores on two sub-dimensions of desire thinking, namely verbal perseveration and imaginal prefiguration, were associated with higher scores on problematic SNS use after we controlled for boredom, affect, and impulsivity. This study demonstrates that desire thinking may play a role in problematic SNS use among adults. We recommend targeting desire thinking as a potential area in treatments which may help alleviate problematic SNS use.