The darker side of positive AI attitudes: Investigating associations with (problematic) social media use

In societies around the world, the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) is being fiercely discussed. It is difficult to grasp AI’s influence, because AI represents a general-purpose technology, which can be applied in different settings. One product in which AI plays a pivotal role is social media. In this context, for instance, AI is used to provide people with personalized newsfeeds to prolong time spent online, which might result in addictive-like behavior. Many factors such as sociodemographic variables, history of psychopathology and personality traits have been revealed as risk factors for developing problematic social media use patterns. Yet, to our knowledge attitudes toward AI have not been examined in association with problematic social media use. In a sample of n = 956 social media users, we observed that positive AI attitudes were linked to overuse of social media as assessed with an addiction framework. The effect size of this association was stronger for males than females. Further we observed that this association was mediated by time spent on social media. The present study shows that positive AI attitudes – although well-known to be positive regarding embracing new technologies – might come with risks for developing addictive patterns of technology use, such as social media.