Memory biases in problematic social media use: The impact of attachment insecurity

Attachment insecurity may intensify the formation of rewarding memory traces associated with social media, potentially driving subsequent social media use in familiar contexts. However, the details of what individuals with problematic social media use (PSMU) remember of social media-related episodes under attachment threat are still largely unknown. The study applied a novel memory task to investigate how attachment threat biases the long-term retrieval of social media-related episodes among at-risk users and to identify which memory aspects predict usage. Results revealed that the acute threat significantly heightened physiological and subjective attachment insecurity and selectively modulated memory retrieval. This modulation reduced access to neutral item memories while enhancing bias toward social media-related associations. Furthermore, enhanced but less detailed memory (i.e., gist memory) for social media-related associations significantly predicted actual social media usage. Trait attachment also influenced memory performance, with attachment anxiety and avoidance predicting different aspects of gist memory performance. These findings advance understanding of the cognitive processes connecting insecure attachment with PSMU and highlight the significance of considering individual differences in attachment when developing prevention and intervention strategies.