Young people may feel less in touch with their own bodies, pay less attention to their sensations and perceive themselves as more distant from their physical experience. Problematic social media use does not only affect attention or mood, but over time it can also foster detachment from bodily experience.
This is the finding of a study published in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions, entitled “A 2-wave study on the associations between dissociative experiences, maladaptive daydreaming, bodily dissociation, and problematic social media use”, conducted by Silvia Casale of the University of Florence, Simon Ghinassi of the University of Pisa and Jon D. Elhai of the University of Toledo in the United States.
The research was carried out on a sample of 216 Italian university students aged between 18 and 33, in two waves four months apart between 2023 and 2024. More than half of the participants reported spending at least two hours a day on social media. Instagram emerged as the most widely used platform, followed by TikTok and, to a lesser extent, X and Reddit.
“What this research clarifies for the first time is the direction of the link between bodily dissociation and problematic social media use,” explains Simon Ghinassi. “The results suggest that it is not feeling detached from one’s body that leads to losing control over social media use. It is the opposite. Compulsive use of so-called appearance-based platforms — for example Instagram — would, over time, lead to increased detachment from one’s own body.”
“The way social platforms operate, based on the editing and manipulation of self-images, encourages individuals to present themselves through a modified version of their bodies, to identify temporarily with an idealised image of themselves and, at the same time, to look at themselves from an external perspective, as if they were observers of their own behaviour. Over time, this third-person view can foster detachment from one’s body and fuel dissociative experiences,” adds Silvia Casale.
But this is not the only “side effect” of problematic social media use. According to the study, problematic use of social platforms may also promote greater absorption in imaginary worlds at the expense of real ones. This is the phenomenon known as imaginative absorption: the tendency to be carried away and immersed in one’s fantasies, leading to reduced awareness of one’s surroundings. The study therefore stresses the importance of promoting a more mindful use of social media, considering its potential negative effects on bodily awareness and on engagement with the world around us.
“Naturally,” Casale concludes, “it cannot be ruled out that other variables, not considered in the present study, may originally be responsible both for problematic social media use and for the tendency towards imaginative absorption and bodily dissociation.”
