Aleksander Rossa, Gloria Bednarek, Natalia Frankowska Scrolling Less, Living More? How Committed Action Links Mindfulness to Frequency of Social Media Use

Abstrakt

Introduction: This empirical correlational study investigated the relationship between dispositional mindfulness and participants’ time spent on social media. To our knowledge, no other researcher has proposed mediating variables between mindfulness and social media use. We hypothesized that our results would replicate prior findings on the negative association between trait mindfulness and social media use and that committed action, from the psychological flexibility model, would mediate this relationship.

Material and Methods: The study’s sample consisted of 182 participants (N = 182), asked to fill out Polish versions of Committed Action Questionnaire–8 (CAQ-8; McCracken et al., 2015; Baran et al., 2019) and Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS; Brown & Ryan, 2003; Radoń, 2014), and to self-report time spent daily using social media.

Results: The findings supported our hypotheses. Trait mindfulness was negatively correlated with the frequency of social media use. Moreover, the effect of trait mindfulness on social media use was fully mediated by committed action. The direct effect of mindfulness on the frequency of social media use was not significant.

Conclusions: The study highlights the importance of mediating variables while researching the relationship between mindfulness and social media use. We further confirmed the model of psychological flexibility central to acceptance-commitment therapy (ACT) by demonstrating a significant mediating role of committed action.