Problematic social media use among young adults is associated with more frequent everyday memory failures, underscoring the potential cognitive correlates of excessive online engagement.
Study: Problematic social media use, everyday memory failures, and prospective and retrospective lapses: evidence from a large sample of young adults. Image Credit: Zwiebackesser / Shutterstock
A recent Frontiers in Psychiatry study examined the association between problematic social media use (PSMU) and self-reported everyday memory functioning.
Cognitive Correlates of Problematic Social Media Use
Social media use has risen sharply among young adults, becoming a central aspect of daily life. While these platforms facilitate communication and information sharing, excessive engagement is increasingly associated with adverse outcomes, such as reduced well-being, impaired social relationships, and addiction-like patterns of behavior. PSMU describes a pattern of uncontrolled, persistent use that disrupts daily functioning, often leading to difficulties in academic, occupational, or personal domains.
Although the emotional and psychosocial consequences of PSMU are well documented, its cognitive effects, especially on memory, remain less clear. Preliminary findings indicate that excessive social media use may contribute to increased memory failures and diminished information retention, likely driven by divided attention, multitasking, and frequent interruptions.
Attentional disruptions may lead to broader inefficiencies in memory encoding and retrieval. Critically, little is known about how PSMU impacts specific memory domains, such as retrospective (recall of past events) and prospective (remembering intended actions) lapses. Most research examines general cognitive lapses without distinguishing specific memory processes, leaving unclear how PSMU affects retrospective and prospective memory.
It remains unclear whether PSMU differentially affects these distinct types of memory lapses. The underlying mechanisms and potential mediating role of everyday memory failures are also insufficiently explored. Systematic research is needed to clarify these relationships, particularly in young adults with high social media engagement, to address these gaps and inform targeted intervention strategies.
Exploring the Relationship Between Social Media Use and Memory Lapses
A total of 943 young Spanish adults aged 18 to 35 years completed an online survey. Participants were recruited via Prolific with filters for nationality, language, and experience. Any candidates who used social media for work or had diagnosed mental, neurological, or physical conditions that could affect attention or mood were excluded. The sample was classified into proposed clinical cutoff and non-clinical groups.
The average participant was 26.6 years old, 52.4% male, and 76.6% had a university education. Most participants reported 1–3 hours of daily social media use; only 5.2% scored at or above the proposed clinical cutoff for PSMU.
A pilot test with 25 participants improved instructions and clarified timing. The entire study, including the pilot, was conducted over two weeks. Survey completion averaged 19 minutes, with compensation aligned to Prolific’s ethical standards.
Demographic variables included age, sex, education, marital status, work-related social media use, nationality, primary language, and daily social media use (grouped into five time ranges). Education was classified by the highest degree obtained.
The current study assessed PSMU with the six-item BSMAS, rated on a 5-point scale. Everyday memory failures were measured using the 28-item EMQ. Items are rated from 1 (once or less in the last month) to 5 (once or more in a day), and higher scores reflect more frequent lapses. The 16-item PRMQ assesses prospective (future-oriented) and retrospective (past-oriented) memory lapses, with eight items per subscale.
PSMU Is Linked to Increased Subjective Memory Difficulties Through Everyday Memory Failures
The results provide a comprehensive picture of how problematic social media use is related to subjective memory difficulties. Two mediation analyses examined whether everyday memory failures explain the association between problematic social media use and both prospective and retrospective memory lapses, as measured by the PRMQ. Indirect effects were estimated using 5,000 bootstrap samples with 95% confidence intervals, a method suited to variables that deviate from normality.
Higher daily social media use and scores at or above the proposed BSMAS clinical cutoff (≥ 24) were consistently associated with elevated BSMAS, EMQ, and PRMQ scores, indicating greater self-reported memory difficulties. Age was weakly related to the main study variables, while sex differences were generally modest. Furthermore, variance inflation factors (VIFs) were < 2.5, indicating no problematic multicollinearity among the variables.
Mediation analyses revealed that everyday memory failures played a substantial statistical mediating role. Specifically, about 74% of the relationship between problematic social media use and prospective memory lapses was statistically accounted for by increased everyday memory failures, highlighting everyday memory difficulties as a key associated pathway.
A similar pattern was observed for retrospective memory lapses, with everyday memory failures accounting for 72% of the association with problematic social media use. This underscores the central importance of everyday memory problems in both types of memory lapses.
Participants scoring at or above the proposed clinical cutoff for problematic social media use (BSMAS ≥ 24) reported markedly more everyday memory failures and both prospective and retrospective lapses compared to non-clinical users, suggesting that elevated PSMU scores are closely linked to increased subjective memory problems.
Finally, there was a clear, graded relationship between time spent on social media and memory difficulties: individuals who used social media for more than 5 hours per day had the highest levels of problematic use and memory problems, while those using less than 1 hour per day reported the lowest levels. This pattern shows that the more time spent on social media, the more frequent subjective memory difficulties are, although the memory-related effect sizes across daily use groups were small, and the study did not fully adjust for potential confounders such as sleep, stress, anxiety, or depression.
Conclusions
PSMU is associated with more frequent overall subjective memory difficulties and specific memory lapses in daily life. General everyday memory problems largely statistically account for the link between social media use and both prospective and retrospective lapses. These results are consistent with the possibility that problematic social media use may be associated with disruptions in core cognitive processes, contributing to both general and specific memory issues, although causal mechanisms and objective memory performance were not directly tested.
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