Miray Sarıyıldız BENZER, Mustafa Nurullah GENÇ, Seydi Ahmet SATICI
Addicta The Turkish Journal On Addictions - 2026;13(3):359-367
Considering that individuals can follow the effects of negative events affecting large masses, such as epidemics, natural disasters, and wars, through online environments, it is inevitable to investigate the effect of persistent follow-up of disturbing content on an individual's burnout. This study investigated the effect of doomscrolling on social media burnout and the mediating roles of online vigilance and secondary traumatic stress. A total of 403 Turkish adults participated in the study. The average age of the participants was 29.92 years. Structural equation modeling was conducted to investigate the mediating roles of online vigilance and secondary traumatic stress in the relationship between doomscrolling and social media burnout. Online vigilance and secondary traumatic stress fully mediated the relationship between doomscrolling and social media burnout. The findings are discussed in the light of existing knowledge on doomscrolling, online vigilance, secondary traumatic stress, and social media burnout. It was observed that social media users' inability to stop themselves from doomscrolling, their online vigilance towards social media, and the negative content they were exposed to mediated their secondary traumatic stress symptoms. As a result, individuals experienced social media burnout.
