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TikTok Addiction Could Be Rooted In Anxiety, Not Willpower
In A Nutshell
- People with high attachment anxiety, a persistent fear of rejection or abandonment, are more likely to develop addictive short-form video habits.
- Two psychological factors appear to bridge that link: poor attentional control (difficulty staying focused) and alexithymia (difficulty identifying one’s own emotions).
- The three factors form a chain: attachment anxiety erodes focus, which may deepen emotional blindness, which then drives compulsive scrolling as a coping mechanism.
- Researchers suggest targeting attention and emotional awareness skills through therapy or cognitive training may be more effective than screen time limits alone.
It’s a common feeling. Tons of people report opening TikTok for “just a few minutes” only to look up and see an hour has passed. For some users, though, that cycle runs deeper than a bad habit, tied to patterns researchers associate with early experiences of love and rejection. A new study published in Frontiers in Psychology found that people who harbor an intense fear of being abandoned or rejected are significantly more likely to develop a problematic relationship with short-form video apps, with two psychological traits appearing to play a key role: a fragmented ability to focus and a difficulty recognizing one’s own feelings.
At the center of the research is a concept called attachment anxiety, often linked to early childhood bonding. People who grow up with inconsistent or emotionally unreliable caregivers often internalize a persistent fear of being unloved or left behind. That fear doesn’t disappear in adulthood. It quietly shapes how people manage stress, sustain attention, and cope with discomfort, and, according to this study, how compulsively they scroll.
Short-form video platforms are designed to keep users engaged for long stretches. Algorithm-driven clips deliver rapid bursts of stimulation that keep the brain’s reward system humming. For people already struggling with anxiety and poor emotional regulation, that feedback loop can be especially difficult to break. Prior research has placed the rate of problematic short-video use among Chinese university students as high as 27 percent, and by 2023, short-video users in China had surpassed one billion.
How Fear of Rejection Connects to TikTok Addiction
Researchers recruited 342 undergraduate students, ages 18 to 22, from a university in China, where data were collected in December 2024. The study was published in March 2026. Participants completed validated questionnaires measuring four variables: attachment anxiety, attentional control (the ability to deliberately focus and redirect attention), alexithymia (difficulty identifying and describing one’s own emotions), and short-video addiction tendencies. Survey items ranged from “I feel distressed when important others do not understand me,” used to measure attachment anxiety, to “I often find it hard to pinpoint my inner feelings,” targeting alexithymia. Responses that appeared rushed or robotically repetitive were screened out before analysis.
Statistical analysis showed that higher attachment anxiety was associated with greater short-video addiction. More important was what came next: the data pointed to two distinct psychological pathways through which that relationship operated, each offering a different window into why anxious attachment and compulsive scrolling so often travel together.
How Attention Problems Drive TikTok Addiction Tendencies
Pathway one runs through attentional control. People high in attachment anxiety tend to exist in a near-constant state of social alertness, scanning for signs of rejection or disapproval. That vigilance consumes mental resources, leaving less capacity to stay on task or voluntarily disengage from a stimulating video feed. “I always spend more time on short-form video applications than I originally planned,” reads one item from the addiction measure used in the study, a statement that will resonate with many users.
Pathway two runs through alexithymia. Someone high in alexithymia isn’t emotionally absent; their inner emotional world is murky and disorganized. When stress arrives, they struggle to name what they’re feeling, let alone work through it. Short-form video offers a reliable escape from that internal confusion, delivering immediate distraction from feelings that resist being identified.
The Chain Reaction Behind Short-Video Addiction
Perhaps the most notable result is a sequential chain tying all three variables together: attachment anxiety was associated with poorer attentional control, which was linked to higher alexithymia, which in turn was associated with greater short-video addiction. Each step is linked to the next in the model.
Researchers suggest that difficulty focusing may nudge people toward outward stimulation rather than inward reflection. Sustained over time, that habit may deepen into a broader inability to process emotions. Once emotional self-awareness erodes, short-form video can become a default outlet for feelings that have nowhere else to go. Worth noting: this sequential pathway is modeled statistically, not established as a direct causal chain, and the sample was drawn entirely from Chinese universities, so how well these patterns would hold elsewhere remains an open question.
Cultural context adds useful perspective here. Chinese social norms around emotional restraint and interpersonal harmony may amplify reliance on digital media as an emotional outlet, researchers note, though culture is treated as context rather than a direct cause of the patterns observed.
What TikTok Addiction Research Means for Young Adults
Attachment anxiety did show a meaningful initial association with short-video addiction on its own. But once attentional control and alexithymia were accounted for, the direct association between attachment anxiety and addictive behavior became non-significant, suggesting that these two psychological factors may account for much of the relationship. That matters because both may be more immediately actionable targets for intervention than attachment patterns, which are deeply ingrained and slow to shift. Researchers suggest these areas could be targeted through approaches such as attention-focused cognitive training or therapy aimed at building emotional awareness, including mindfulness-based or emotion-focused methods.
That framing points toward a more meaningful question than screen time. For some users, compulsive scrolling may be less about the content itself and more about what it temporarily solves.
Disclaimer: This article is based on an observational study using self-reported data from a single sample of Chinese university students. The findings reflect statistical associations, not proven cause-and-effect relationships. Results may not generalize to other populations or cultural contexts.
Paper Notes
Limitations
Several limitations should be considered when interpreting these results. Notably, the sample skewed heavily male, with 246 of the 342 participants (about 72 percent) being men, which runs counter to the female skew common in social science research and may limit how broadly the findings apply. All data were collected through self-report questionnaires, a method vulnerable to social desirability bias and inaccurate self-recall. Most importantly, the study used a cross-sectional design, meaning all data were gathered at a single point in time, so no causal conclusions can be drawn from the associations observed. Future research would benefit from more gender-balanced samples, behavioral or peer-report measures, and longitudinal designs that track participants over time.
Funding and Disclosures
Authors declared that no financial support was received for this research or its publication. No commercial or financial conflicts of interest were reported. Authors disclosed that generative AI was used solely for language polishing and grammatical correction during manuscript preparation and did not contribute to data analysis, interpretation, or the study’s theoretical framework.
Publication Details
This study was authored by Haodong Su and Dan Luo (co-first authors), Hongyu Wang, Xiaodong Li, and Ye He, affiliated with Anhui Science and Technology University and the Second People’s Hospital of Guizhou Province in China. Data were collected in December 2024. Results were published on March 26, 2026, in Frontiers in Psychology under the title “From attachment anxiety to short video addiction: the roles of attentional control and alexithymia.” DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1764536.
