Problematic social media use among young people is associated with more frequent everyday memory problems, highlighting potential cognitive correlates of excessive online engagement.
Study: Problematic social media use, everyday memory impairment, and prospective and retrospective lapses: Evidence from a large sample of youth. Image credit: Zwiebackesser / Shutterstock
recent frontiers of psychiatry This study investigated the association between problematic social media use (PSMU) and self-reported everyday memory function.
Cognitive correlates of problematic social media use
Social media usage is rapidly increasing among young people and has become a central aspect of daily life. Although these platforms facilitate communication and information sharing, over-involvement is increasingly associated with harmful outcomes such as decreased well-being, impaired social relationships, and addiction-like behavior patterns. PSMU describes a pattern of uncontrolled and persistent use that often interferes with daily functioning and causes difficulties in academic, occupational, or personal areas.
Although the emotional and psychosocial effects of PSMU are well documented, its cognitive effects, particularly on memory, are still unclear. Preliminary findings indicate that excessive social media use is likely caused by divided attention, multitasking, and frequent interruptions, which may contribute to increased memory impairment and decreased information retention.
Disruption of attention can cause widespread inefficiencies in memory encoding and retrieval. Importantly, little is known about how PSMU affects specific memory domains, such as retrospective (recollection of past events) and prospective (recollection of intended actions) lapses. Most studies have investigated general cognitive decline without distinguishing between specific memory processes, and it remains unclear how PSMU affects retrospective and prospective memory.
It remains unclear whether PSMU differentially affects these different types of memory loss. The mechanisms underlying everyday memory impairment and potential mediating roles have also not been fully investigated. Systematic research is needed to clarify these relationships, address these gaps, and inform targeted intervention strategies, especially in young adults with high levels of social media engagement.
Exploring the relationship between social media use and memory loss
A total of 943 Spanish young people aged 18 to 35 completed the online survey. Participants were recruited through Prolific using filters such as nationality, language, and experience. Candidates who used social media at work or who had been diagnosed with a mental, neurological, or physical illness that could affect alertness or mood were excluded. The samples were categorized into proposed clinical cutoff groups and non-clinical groups.
The average participant was 26.6 years old, 52.4% were male, and 76.6% had some university education. Most participants reported 1 to 3 hours of social media use each day. Only 5.2% scored at or above the PSMU’s proposed clinical cutoff.
Pilot testing with 25 participants improved instructions and clarified timing. The entire study, including the pilot, was conducted over a two-week period. Surveys took an average of 19 minutes to complete and were compensated in accordance with Prolific’s ethical standards.
Demographic variables included age, gender, education, marital status, work-related social media use, nationality, first language, and daily social media use (grouped into five time ranges). Education was categorized by highest degree earned.
In the current study, PSMU was assessed with the 6-item BSMAS on a 5-point scale. Everyday memory impairment was measured using the 28-item EMQ. Items are rated from 1 (less than once in the last month) to 5 (more than once per day), with higher scores indicating more frequent expirations. The 16-item PRMQ assesses prospective (future-oriented) and retrospective (past-oriented) memory loss with eight items per subscale.
PSMU is associated with increased subjective memory difficulties due to everyday memory impairment
The results provide a comprehensive picture of how problematic social media use is associated with subjective memory impairment. Two mediation analyzes investigated whether everyday memory impairments explained the association between problematic social media use and both prospective and retrospective memory loss, as measured by the PRMQ. Indirect effects were estimated using 5,000 bootstrap samples with 95% confidence intervals, which is an appropriate method for variables that deviate from normality.
Higher daily social media use and scores above the proposed BSMAS clinical cutoff (24 or higher) were consistently associated with higher BSMAS, EMQ, and PRMQ scores, indicating greater self-reported memory impairment. Age had weak associations with the main study variables, and gender differences were generally modest. Furthermore, the variance inflation factor (VIF) was less than 2.5, indicating that there was no problematic multicollinearity between the variables.
Mediation analysis revealed that daily memory impairment played a substantial statistical mediating role. Specifically, approximately 74% of the relationship between problematic social media use and future memory loss was statistically explained by increased daily memory impairment, highlighting that daily memory impairment is an important association pathway.
A similar pattern was observed for retrospective memory loss, with daily memory loss accounting for 72% of the association with problematic social media use. This highlights the central importance of everyday memory problems in both types of memory loss.
Participants who scored above the proposed clinical cutoff for problematic social media use (BSMAS ≥ 24) reported significantly more daily memory impairment and both prospective and retrospective memory loss compared to non-clinical users, suggesting that increased PSMU scores are closely associated with increased subjective memory impairment.
Finally, there was a clear graded relationship between time spent on social media and memory impairment. Those who used social media for more than five hours a day had the highest levels of problematic use and memory problems, while those who used social media for less than an hour a day reported the lowest levels. This pattern indicates that subjective memory impairment occurs more frequently the more time spent on social media, but the overall memory-related effect size for the daily use group was small and the study did not fully adjust for potential confounders such as sleep, stress, anxiety, and depression.
conclusion
PSMU is associated with more frequent global subjective memory impairment and specific memory loss in daily life. Common everyday memory problems provide a primarily statistical explanation for the association between social media use and both prospective and retrospective lapses. These results are consistent with the possibility that problematic social media use is associated with disruption of core cognitive processes, contributing to general and specific memory problems, but the causal mechanisms and objective memory abilities have not been directly tested.
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