Christian Montag

Ulm University | UULM · Institute of Psychology and Education

The present chapter revisits the prevailing data business model of the social media industry and explains how it stands in conflict with psycho-developmental tasks in children and adolescents. In this realm, issues surrounding the current “APIcalypse” (based on the term application program interfaces (APIs); closed APIs hindering the study of socia...

Given the ability to use the internet and applications that are both immediately accessible and highly rewarding to users, concern exists regarding the development of excessive and dysregulated smartphone use (also known as ‘smartphone addiction’). This chapter reviews the current state of research on dysregulated smartphone use, identifies gaps in...

The adoption of videoconferencing has brought significant convenience to people’s lives. However, as videoconferencing usage has skyrocketed, it has unveiled a range of side effects, most notably videoconference fatigue (VF). In response, this paper employed the Limited Capacity Model of Motivated Mediated Message Processing (LC4MP) as a theoretica...

We compared Ed Diener’s Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS), which was designed as a purely cognitive measure of global life satisfaction, with the Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales 3.1 , which provides self-report measures of Panksepp’s six primary emotions (excluding LUST), in two English-speaking samples: a main sample and a hold-out val...

Background: Serotonin (5-HT) critically regulates cognitive and emotional functions, and both stable and transient variations in 5-HT signaling have been associated with emotional dysregulations. However, findings regarding the neurofunctional effects of transient 5-HT variations have been highly inconsistent. Therefore, we examined whether individ...

Objectives We investigated salivary biomarkers of stress, more specifically, cortisol and alpha-amylase, to evaluate effects of individualized music listening (IML) in people with dementia. Method Participants were N = 64 nursing home residents with dementia (meanage = 83.53 ± 7.71 years, 68.8% female). Participants were randomly assigned to eithe...

Studying political opinions of citizens stands as a fundamental pursuit for both policymakers and researchers. While traditional surveys remain the primary method to investigate individual political opinions, the advent of social media data (SMD) offers novel prospects. However, the number of studies using SMD to extract individuals’ political opin...

Background and aims Previous evidence has indicated that problematic social media use (PSMU) is characterized by an attentional bias to social media icons (such as Facebook icons), but not to social webpages (such as Facebook webpages). They suggest that there may be other factors influencing attentional bias like fear of missing out (FoMO). But it...

Background According to the cognitive behavioral model of social anxiety, attentional bias to negative emotional information causes and maintains anxiety. The goal of attentional bias modification (ABM) is to reduce anxiety by reducing attention bias to negative emotional information. Method We used questionnaires and experiments to explore the im...

Objective In the present work we investigate how individual differences in at least occasionally using distinct social media platforms is linked to social networks use disorder (SNUD) tendencies. A final sample of n = 2200 participants filled in the AICA-C-9 measure to get insights into individual differences in overuse of social media and particip...

In 2019, Gaming Disorder (GD) was acknowledged as an official diagnosis by the World Health Organization. The Gaming Disorder Test (GDT) is the most widely used tool to measure GD; however, due to its novelty, various measurement properties are still unexplored, and the number of validated language variants is still limited. The present study is th...

The present study investigated whether life engagement and happiness can be predicted from gaming motives and primary emotional traits. Two machine learning algorithms (random forest model and one-dimensional convolutional neural network) were applied using a dataset from before the COVID-19 pandemic as the training dataset. The algorithms derived...

Background Smartphones and social media have become ubiquitous in our lives, and while debates about their negative impact on mental health, addictive potential, and disruptive effects on daily activities have surged, neurobiological evidence remains scarce. Here, we investigated whether the behavioral and neural effects of interference of continuo...

In recent years, concerns over the potential negative impacts of social network sites (SNS) on users’ digital wellbeing are on the rise. These concerns have sparked a growing demand for SNS to introduce changes to their business model and offer features that prioritize users’ wellbeing, even if it means introducing fees to users. Still, it is quest...

At the time of writing, about 4.59 billion people use social media with many adolescents using their social media accounts across a myriad of applications and platforms. According to recent statistics, in 2022 individuals spent an average of 151 minutes on social media each day, illustrating the global relevance of social media (Dixon, 2022a, Dixon...

In recent years, there has been a growing need for social media platforms to offer services that preserve and promote users' digital wellbeing, including better protection of personal data and balanced technology usage. However, the current business model of social media is often seen as in conflict with users' digital wellbeing. In 2020, a study i...

The present study aimed to use a novel method (i.e., network analysis) to examine if the Internet Gaming Disorder Scale–Short-Form (IGDS9-SF) has its unidimensional structure supported across different subgroups, including gender groups, continent groups, and age groups. Participants from five continents (n = 545 in Africa; n = 27,910 in Americas;...

Graphical AbstractImpact of smartphone (over)use on cerebro-cardio-vascular health.

The prevalence of social network sites (SNS) and messaging platforms (MSG) has transformed the way people communicate, interact, and share information. However, concerns about digital wellbeing have arisen due to issues such as disclosure of personal information, excessive usage, fake news, extremism, and mental health challenges. This study aims t...

Autistic individuals generally demonstrate impaired emotion recognition but it is unclear whether effects are emotion-specific or influenced by oxytocin receptor (OXTR) genotype. Here we implemented a dimensional approach using an implicit emotion recognition task together with functional MRI in a large cohort of neurotypical adult participants (N...

The relationship between Gaming Disorder (GD) and the experience of functional impairments has received considerable theoretical attention in the recent past and current diagnostic approaches underscore the centrality of functional impairments as a requirement for GD diagnosis. However, there is limited empirical evidence illuminating the interplay...

Background and aim The study investigated the effects of a 14-day social media abstinence on various mental health factors using an experimental design with follow-up assessment. Hypotheses included positive associations between problematic smartphone use (PSU) and depression, anxiety, fear of missing out (FoMO), and screentime. Decreases in screen...

WhatsApp has billions of users worldwide. Instead of paying a subscription fee, users provide their data for the use allowance. This data is used by Meta – the company behind WhatsApp – to obtain insights into user characteristics and monetize those insights. However, this data business model is among others criticized for fostering a loss of priva...

Background We introduce a novel measure for assessing TikTok overuse, called the TikTok Use Disorder-Questionnaire (TTUD-Q). As part of ongoing investigations into the suitability of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) framework for diagnosing Gaming Disorder in the context of social media overuse, we developed this questionnaire by adapting the...

This work investigated the prevalence of filter bubble or echo chamber-related phenomena, psychological factors rendering individuals resilient or vulnerable to them, and their associations to political views focusing on extremity and polarization. For this, a cross-cultural replication of a study by Sindermann et al. (2021) was conducted. As an ex...

Increasing dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) activity by anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) enhances cognitive control and might reduce aggression. The Val158Met polymorphism within the catechol-O-methyltransferase gene (rs4680) plays a pivotal role in prefrontal dopamine signaling, displaying associations with aggressive be...

Studying public opinion stands as a fundamental pursuit for both policymakers and researchers. While traditional surveys remain the primary method to investigate individual political opinions, the advent of social media data (SMD) offers novel prospects. However, the number of studies using SMD to extract individuals’ political opinions are limited...

The recent years have seen a dramatic surge in the use of smartphones and social media, with the latter likely to be a driving force for smartphone use disorder (SmUD) tendencies. Smartphones are popularly perceived to suppress creativity by occupying moments of free thought and stealing time from developing new ideas. This paper contributes to the...

Artificial intelligence represents a key technology being inbuilt into evermore products. Research investigating attitudes towards artificial intelligence surprisingly is still scarce, although it becomes apparent that artificial intelligence will shape societies around the globe. To better understand individual differences in attitudes towards art...

Aims The present study investigated the potential links between Internet Use Disorder tendencies, well-being and the impact of COVID-19 on Internet usage patterns. Method A sample of 2498 participants filled out the Compulsive Internet Use Scale (CIUS), the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS; the cognitive facet of well-being) and the Sofalizing S...

People are evolutionarily predisposed to associate threat relevant stimuli with fear or aversiveness and show an attentional bias toward threat. Attentional bias modification (ABM) has been shown to reduce threat biases, while quantitative reviews assessing the effectiveness of bias modification yielded inconsistent results. The current study exami...

This chapter focuses on the role of impulsivity in personality psychology. After a brief introduction on its relevance to (psycho-)pathologies and health outcomes, an overview of personality is provided, followed by a discussion of various approaches to defining and measuring impulsivity. The chapter then delves deeper into impulsivity as a persona...

In this paper, we present ChatDashboard, a framework for collecting, linking, and processing donated WhatsApp chat log data. The framework consists of the WhatsR R package for parsing, anonymizing, and preprocessing donated WhatsApp chat logs, the ChatDashboard R Shiny web app for uploading, reviewing, and securely donating WhatsApp chat logs, and...

Purpose The growing awareness and concern about the excessive use of social media have led to an increasing number of studies investigating the underlying factors contributing to this behavior. In the literature, it is discussed that problematic social media use (PSMU) can impact individuals’ mental health and well-being. Drawing on the Interaction...

BACKGROUND Unobtrusively collected objective sensor data from everyday devices like smartphones provide a novel paradigm to infer mental health symptoms. This process called smart sensing allows a fine-grained assessment of various features (e.g., time spent at home based on the GPS sensor). Based on its prevalence and impact depression is a promis...

Shinrin-Yoku, also known as forest-bathing, has become the focus of much psychological and neuroscientific research in recent years. In this realm, it has been shown that spending time in the forest, with a focus on the forest environment, has positive effects on both cognition and emotion. Interestingly, an individual differences perspective from...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is built into many products and has the potential to dramatically impact societiesaround the world. This short theoretical paper aims to provide a simple framework that might help us understand how theintroduction and/or use of products with AI might influence the well-being of humans. It is proposed that considering th...

Background Nearly five billion individuals worldwide are using social media platforms. While the benefits of using social media, such as fostering social connections, are clear, ongoing discussions are focused on whether excessive use of these platforms might have adverse effects on cognitive functioning. Excessive social media use shares similarit...

We explored problematic smartphone use (PSU) using latent profile analysis (LPA) and relationships with anxiety variables, including severity of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), social anxiety disorder (SAD), and Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) in a non-clinical sample. We conducted a web-based survey (during the COVID-19 pandemic from February to Ma...

Potential benefits and risks related to mainstream social media platforms and their revenue model are vigorously debated. However, a comprehensive framework of performance criteria to evaluate social media platforms and suggestions for transforming them are rare. Employing a transdisciplinary approach, the present work aimed to close these gaps thr...

The present work comments on Watt’s Target Article, which argues that focusing on separation distress, a relevant construct from Pankseppian affective neuroscience theory, might help to shed new light on depression. This represents an important new research avenue, because Watt’s recent work shows the difficulties in understanding depression, a dev...

Much research has been conducted on the association between social networks use disorder tendencies (SNUD; i.e. problematic social media use) and well-being. In more detail, a meta-analysis and further research suggest an inverse association between higher SNUD tendencies and lower well-being. In existing studies on social media use and well-being,...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is built into many products and has the potential to dramatically impact societies around the world. This short theoretical paper aims to provide a simple framework that might help us understand how the introduction and/or use of products with AI might influence the well-being of humans. It is proposed that consideri...

Recent meta-analytical evidence indicates a mild association between higher neuroticism and lower conscientiousness scores and a tendency towards problematic social media use (PSMU). However, fear of missing out (FoMO) has emerged as a critical variable in understanding the positive link between neuroticism and PSMU. Given the replication crisis in...

Autistic individuals generally demonstrate impaired emotion recognition but it is unclear whether effects are emotion-specific or influenced by oxytocin receptor (OXTR) genotype. Here we implemented a dimensional approach using an implicit emotion recognition task together with functional MRI in a large cohort of subjects (N = 255) to establish ass...

A growing number of researchers investigate individual differences in attitudes toward artificial intelligence (AI), which is not surprising given that the AI revolution is impacting societies around the globe. Different frameworks have been proposed to study both positive and negative attitudes toward AI. To our knowledge, the present work is the...

Background Previous research has linked smartphone and Instagram use to higher body dissatisfaction (BD) as well as eating disorder (ED) symptomatology. However, these studies have typically been limited to using self-report measures for technology use which, as shown by scientific literature, might not be reliable. In the present work, we combine...

Serotonin (5-HT) has long been implicated in adaptive emotion regulation as well as the development and treatment of emotional dysregulations in mental disorders. Accumulating evidence suggests a genetic vulnerability may render some individuals at a greater risk for the detrimental effects of transient variations in 5-HT signaling. The present stu...

In response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, many individuals turned to synchronous online video communication technologies as a substitute for real-world face-to-face interactions. Evidence indicates that some users of such technologies show symptoms of exhaustion and fatigue during and after videoconferences (VCs) – this pheno...

Social networking sites (SNS), with Facebook as a prominent example, have become an integral part of our daily lives and more than four billion people worldwide use SNS. However, the (over-)use of SNS also poses both psychological and physiological risks. In the present article, we review the scientific literature on the risk of Facebook (over-)use...

The present study investigated potential associations between tendencies towards social networks use disorder (SNUD) and smoking status/tobacco use disorder (TUD) tendencies. A final sample of n = 529 participants was recruited via an online survey, with the effective sample comprising n = 228 non-smokers, n = 54 ex-smokers, and n = 247 smokers. In...

The present study investigated the extent to which the concepts of the individual tendency to trust in (automated) technology, technology self-efficacy, accepting/fearing artificial intelligence and trust in AI overlap. This research question is of relevance because trust in automation literature is rich, whereas only a few studies exist in the con...

Background and aims: The present study investigated processing bias for game-related cues in problematic mobile gamers (PMGs) under or above the threshold of conscious awareness. Methods: In Experiment 1, all participants (20 PMGs and 23 casual players (CPs)) finished a masked visual probe task during a brief (17ms) masked exposure condition. In...

Background Problematic internet and smartphone use are significant health challenges for contemporary adolescents. However, their mutual relationship is unclear because studies investigating these phenomena are scarce. The present study aimed to investigate the psychological risks and protective factors associated with problematic internet and smar...