Social media addiction and well-being in rural children: From a self-determination theory perspective

The popularity of social media amongst children and adolescents has exponentially increased and is firmly embedded within youth culture worldwide. Despite differences in young people’s social media adoption and use across countries, the prevalence of social media is universal. Existing studies on social media addiction mainly focus on adolescents, with a limited understanding of social media use at different developmental stages. More and more children and teens are and crowd out other age-appropriate activities, such as socializing, sports, and school work. This is even worse in rural areas with left-behind children.

As of June 2022, rural internet users in China numbered 293 million, accounting for 27.9% of all Internet users. Teens were found to spend excessive amounts of time on social media and psychologists and addiction experts are reporting seeing more teenagers whose behavior looks alarmingly like addiction, beginning with intermittent to recreational use, then progressing into daily use, and then into consequential use or even life-threatening use. Children’s impaired self-awareness, dysfunctional relationships with their parents, and imbalanced social environment have contributed to the growing risk of social media addiction.

Children in rural areas typically face a unique constellation of psychosocial challenges, such as less social support, impaired emotional adjustment, and a lack of adequate psychological education and support. They tend to experience repeated parental migration, who are at higher risk of maladaptive psychological development. In this talk, I would like to present a recent project examining short-form video addiction in primary school children in Chinese rural areas and how that would be related to their well-being as indicated by school engagement and social isolation. As a macro theory of human motivation, the self-determination theory (SDT) purports to explain the motivational causes of wellness and thriving. It identifies three basic psychological needs, namely, autonomy, competence, and relatedness, and asserts that all human beings have evolved such a set of basic psychological needs, which are essential for optimal development and wellbeing. Rural students’ basic psychological needs are often unmet due to parental absence, reduced social support, and fragmented caregiving, leading to inadequate emotional adjustment, such as higher depression, loneliness, lower self-esteem, and social isolation. This relationship pattern also reveals significant differences across gender. The findings will be discussed both in a national and international context.

Dr. Mingming Zhou is a Professor in Faculty of Education at University of Macau. She is highly research active and has published about 100 journal articles mostly in the area of positive psychology, achievement motivation and emotion regulation. Her current research projects include developing new measures for emotion regulation during collaboration, role of digital technology in intercultural competence, social media addiction among different student groups, and others. She has been listed among the world's top 2% most-cited scientists in the 2023, 2024 rankings published by Stanford University.