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The Reciprocal Relationships between Social Media Self-control Failure, Mindfulness and Wellbeing: A Longitudinal Study
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Description: Social media self-control failure is characterized by the social media induced distraction from other ongoing tasks (e.g., work, study), which might undermine people’s mindfulness and psychological wellbeing. The present study examined the reciprocal relationships between social media self-control failure and mindfulness, as well as exploring the reciprocal relationship between social media self-control failure and psychological wellbeing. Using a 3-wave longitudinal design, 594 daily social media users aged from 16 to 60 participated in an online survey. Results of the random-intercept cross-lagged panel model showed that social media self-control failure has a time-invariant negative association with mindfulness and subjective vitality. Although no full reciprocal influence was found between social media self-control failure and mindfulness, a part of this trajectory was observed, suggesting that self-control failure during social media use could impair mindfulness, which in turn, might increase future social media self-control failure. It should be noted that this conclusion depends on the presumption that other possible confounding factors (e.g., holiday period between time 2 and time 3) may not equally affect the reciprocal model between each survey. Conclusions under different presumptions of the reciprocal relationships were also discussed. Keywords: Social media; Self-control; Mindfulness; Subjective vitality; Life satisfaction; Reciprocal effect; RI-CLPM