Selective suprasecond timing deficit in social media addicts: Bisection task reveals overestimation and impaired sensitivity without subsecond effects

The rise of social media has raised concerns about its addictive potential and impairments in mental health and cognitive functions, including distortions in time processing. Emerging evidence suggests social media addicts tend to misestimate the amount of time spent using social media, hinting at possible problems with their cognitive time-processing. This study aimed to investigate the impact of social media addiction on basic time perception using controlled experimental paradigms. Forty participants scoring ≥24 on the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale with ≥5 hr daily usage were recruited, alongside 40 controls. After excluding individuals craving, fear of missing out for social media, or test anxiety during experiment, final samples included 36 addicts and 37 controls. Time reproduction (motor timing) and bisection (perceptual timing) tasks were administered, distinguishing subsecond (1 s) intervals. Tasks used neutral gray stimuli to avoid social media cues and included pretask rest to control physiological arousal. Social media addicts exhibited significant deficits in suprasecond bisection task, demonstrated by lower subjective equality points (1,430.69 vs. 1,549.32 ms) and higher Weber ratios (0.41 vs. 0.29), indicating both time overestimation and reduced time sensitivity. No significant group differences were observed in reproduction tasks or in subsecond bisection task. These findings establish that social media addiction selectively impairs suprasecond perceptual timing, characterized by overestimation and diminished sensitivity. These findings establish a novel cognitive deficit linked to addictive social media use, with potential clinical implications for intervention strategies targeting distorted time processing.