Problematic Attachment to Social Media: the Psychological States vs Usage Styles

Many people worldwide rely on social media to satisfy their social needs for relatedness, learning and enhancing self-esteem. However, over-reliance on social media often results in problematic attachment, which risks personal, social and financial wellbeing. From a design perspective, we argue that social media can be improved with tools to manage such problematic attachment and help users reform their interaction style, social expectations and online identity to restore a healthy reliance. Designing such behaviour change tools can be challenging due to the characteristics of people with problematic behaviours, e.g. denial, relapse and cognitive dissonance. This paper explores the role of social media in such attachment and reveals associated psychological states. Our method provides an ecologically valid exploration through employing diary studies as a data collection method, aiming to introduce countermeasures for problematic attachment in future social media design.