Why does attachment anxiety fuel short-form video addiction?

Deep emotional blind spots and struggles for attention may be behind endless scrolling, as new research suggests why some young adults are more sensitive to overuse of short-form video.

Study: From attachment anxiety to short video addiction: The roles of attention control and alexithymia.. Image Credit: Javier Bermudez Zayas/Shutterstock.com

a fresh boundaries in psychology The study examined the relationship between short-form video addiction and attachment anxiety, attentional control, and alexithymia. Higher levels of short-form video addiction are positively associated with attachment anxiety, while indirect associations exist through two pathways, namely higher alexithymia and lower attentional control.

Short-Form Video Addiction and Attachment Anxiety Theory

Short-form video addiction (SVA) involves excessive engagement with short-form video applications (for example, TikTok), which can lead to reduced efficiency in daily activities and a tendency to use such videos to cope or avoid it. The problem is most prevalent in younger populations such as university students, with prevalence rates sometimes reported as high as 27.12%. Therefore, it is essential to develop a good understanding of the psychological correlates of SVA.

Susceptibility to behavioral addiction is closely linked to self-regulatory patterns in addition to external technical characteristics, such as algorithmic recommendations and instant feedback. Attachment theory suggests that early interactions with primary caregivers have a long-term impact on the individual and that insecure attachment is linked to difficulties in regulating attention. SVA may be a compensatory behavioral tendency related to attachment-related weaknesses.

Attachment anxiety (AA) is associated with negative self-evaluations, intense fear of rejection, and a tendency to seek excessive reassurance to reduce internal insecurities. It also shapes underlying cognitive processing, particularly attention control (AC). In other words, AA is associated with a reduction in a person’s ability to concentrate on current tasks, leading to an observable reduction in AC.

Alexithymia (ALE) is a condition in which a person has difficulty describing emotions to others and recognizing their own emotions. It is also closely linked to early attachment experiences. In early interactions with primary caregivers, unreliable or intrusive responses to the child’s emotional needs may eventually lead to a disorganized emotional world, which manifests as ale. When such individuals face stress, they are unable to manage their emotions; As a result, short videos present highly attractive “solutions” and serve as a means of cognitive and emotional escape.

Evaluating the relationship between AA and SVA

Several hypotheses were tested: AA is connected to SVA via AC; AA is connected to SVA through Alley; and a more sequential route from AA to AC to Ale to SVA. A total of 364 Chinese university students were recruited for this study and completed a survey under the guidance of an experimenter in a classroom setting. Several exclusion criteria were applied to ensure data quality. The final sample consisted of 342 undergraduate students aged 18–22, of whom 246 were male and 96 female. The study employed a cross-sectional design using self-report measures.

Various scales were used to measure AA, AC, ALE and SVA. The AA scale consisted of eight items, rated on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). A higher total score indicates higher AA. The Attentional Control Scale (ACS) consisted of 20 items and two subscales: Attentional Focusing and Attentional Shifting. On a 4-point Likert scale, a score of 1 indicates strongly disagree, while a score of 4 indicates strongly agree. Higher scores indicated greater attentional control.

The Chinese modified version of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) was used to assess ALE, while SVA was assessed using the 20-item Short-Form Video Addiction Scale (SFVAS). The latter was developed for use with Chinese university students. Higher scores on the SFVAS indicated a higher tendency rather than clinical addiction.

AA is linked to SVA through attentional control and alexithymia.

Regarding descriptive statistics and correlation between the variables under study, AA was positively associated with SVA (r = 0.21) and ALE (r = 0.39) and negatively related with AC (r = -0.19). The correlation between AC and SVA was -0.31, and between SVA and ALE was 0.46. Overall, the distribution of the variables was approximately normal, supporting the parametric analysis. Harman’s single-factor test indicated a low probability of significant common method bias, which could confound data interpretation.

Significant gender differences were observed in both attachment anxiety and attentional control, although no significant differences were found across academic year groups. Higher levels of attachment anxiety were associated with poorer attention control, and gender also played a role in predicting attention control levels. In turn, less attention control was linked to greater short-form video addiction, with gender again emerging as a contributing factor.

Attachment anxiety was also positively associated with short-form video addiction, whereas attentional control showed a negative relationship with addiction tendencies. Importantly, even after accounting for differences in attentional control, attachment anxiety remained associated with higher levels of short-form video use. Overall, these findings support the first hypothesis, indicating that attentional control partially explains the association between attachment anxiety and short-form video addiction.

In relation to the hypothesis of AA influencing SVA through the ELL-emotional pathway, higher attachment anxiety was associated with greater alexithymia, meaning that individuals were more likely to struggle with recognizing and describing their emotions. Gender also showed a modest association with levels of alexithymia. In turn, higher alexithymia was associated with increased addiction to short-form videos. Together, these findings support the second hypothesis, indicating that difficulties in emotional processing help explain the association between attachment anxiety and problematic short-form video use.

In sequential mediation analyses, gender and grade were included as covariates. The results indicated that ALE significantly positively predicted SVA, whereas AC significantly negatively predicted SVA. A bias-corrected percentile bootstrap procedure was conducted to test series mediation effects. The results showed that the total effect of AA on SVA was significant, whereas the direct effect was not significant after accounting for mediators. However, all indirect paths were significant: AA to AC to SVA, AA to Ale to SVA, and AA to AC to Ale to SVA.

conclusion

This study employed an integrated chain-mediation model to systematically investigate the relationships between SVA, AA, AC and ALE. It was noted that AA was associated with greater engagement in short-form video use. Furthermore, differences in self-regulatory abilities, i.e., AC and ALE, were noted.

The findings suggest potential targets for intervention. Individuals with high AA may benefit from targeting factors such as AC and ALL. This “dual pathway” intervention strategy may help address the observed relationship between SVA and AA. The findings should also be interpreted within the Chinese cultural context, where norms of emotional expression and regulation may dictate how individuals engage with digital media.

Longitudinal research will be needed to clarify the direction of these relationships. However, given the cross-sectional and self-report nature of the study, these findings should be interpreted as associative rather than causal.

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