Cognitive Overload and Emotional Regulation in High-Frequency Social Media Users

Abstract

With the emergence of social media platforms, the trend of consumption of information turned into an uninterrupted high-speed flow of disjointed content. This research paper has explored the connection between cognitive overload and emotional control in the high-frequency users of social media. The cross-sectional design was qualitative and focused on the people aged between 18-35 years. Standardized psychometric measures were used to gather data and they included the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ), Attentional Control Scale (ACS) and Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory (MFI-20). The results proved that cognitive overload had a significant positive correlation with the frequency of social media use (r = 0.58, p < 0.001). Cognitive overload had a high negative correlation with adaptive emotional regulation strategies including cognitive reappraisal (r = -0.35, p < 0.01) and also positive correlation with maladaptive strategies including expressive suppression (r = 0.41, p < 0.001). The findings confirmed that excessive online activities exhausted cognitive resources, worsened attentional control and diminished emotional stability.