A tale of two concepts: differential temporal predictions of habitual and compulsive social media use concerning connection overload and sleep quality

Given how strongly social media is permeating young people’s everyday lives, many of them have formed strong habits that, under specific circumstances, can spiral out of control and bring harmful experiences. Unlike in extant literature where habitual and compulsive behaviors are often conflated, we report findings from a two-wave panel study examining the individual predictive value of both habitual and compulsive social media use on connection overload (i.e., information and communication overload) and sleep quality. Longitudinal structural equation modeling reveals that only compulsive social media use is related to enhanced feelings of connection overload and to poorer sleep, whereas habitual social media use had no significant associations with either indicator over time. These differential findings highlight a conceptual imperative for future approaches to further clarify the nature of people’s media habits to prevent spurious (and potentially overpathologizing) conclusions.