Only healthy participants are included in this study.
Conditions
Interventions
Group 1: RWTH Aachen University
Data collection will be carried out in the Department of Psychiatry within the RWTH Aachen University Hospital and. Thirty healthy adults will be recruited with inclus
Sponsors
Uniklinik RWTH Aachen
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
18 Years to 50 Years
Inclusion criteria
Inclusion criteria: Fluency in German/Korean, normal or corrected-to-normal vision and report regular use of social media feeds in everyday life (minimum 1h per week).
Exclusion criteria
Exclusion criteria: Exclusion criteria are a history of neurological disorders, current or past severe psychiatric disorders, and the use of medication that substantially affects central nervous system functioning.
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame |
|---|---|
| The overarching aim of this project is to improve the empirical assessment and understanding of social media scrolling behavior and its relationship to well-being. Specifically, the project pursues three interrelated objectives. First, the project aims to develop and validate an experimental, naturalistic scrolling task that captures core features of everyday social media use while allowing for controlled, real-time measurement of scrolling behavior and subjective experience. The task is designed to differentiate between distinct forms of scrolling behavior, in particular affect-driven engagement with negative or crisis-related content (“doomscrolling”) and passive, habitual engagement with repetitive low-effort content (“zombie scrolling”). The task will be designed to be applicable for presentation inside the MRI Scanner. Second, the project aims to develop a new self-report questionnaire assessing perceived individual online content environments. This instrument is intended to capture subjective characteristics of users’ social media feeds, including emotional tone, thematic structure, homogeneity, diversity, perceived algorithmic personalization, and relevance to everyday concerns. The goal is to address the current lack of validated tools for assessing individualized content expo-sure beyond global usage metrics. | — |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame |
|---|---|
| The project aims to examine associations between experimentally observed scrolling behavior, perceived content environments, and indicators of stress and well-being in a cross-cultural context. By collecting data in Germany and Korea, the study seeks to assess the generalizability of the developed measures and explore potential cultural similarities and differences in scrolling behavior and its psychological correlates. Together, these aims provide a methodological foundation for future multimodal investiga-tions of the cognitive, affective, and neural mechanisms underlying social media engagement and well-being. | — |
Countries
Germany, South Korea
Contacts
Public ContactJulia Schräder
Uniklinik RWTH Aachen
Outcome results
None listed