Exploring adolescent social media and internet gaming addiction: The role of emotion regulation

Behavioral addictions such as social media addiction and internet gaming disorder are prevalent among adolescent populations. Although studies have investigated predictors of these addictive behaviors with international samples of adolescents, less is known about American adolescents. In this study, we investigated the predictive nature of emotion regulation after controlling for age, gender, and race with regard to social media addiction and internet gaming disorder severity. Results indicate that gender and emotion regulation significantly predicted both forms of behavioral addictions with small to moderate effects. Specifically, female gender and lower emotion regulation significantly predicted social media addiction and male gender and lower emotion regulation significantly predicted internet gaming disorder severity. Implications for mental health professionals are discussed.