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. 2022 Jun 29:13:880065.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.880065. eCollection 2022.

Exposure to Depression Memes on Social Media Increases Depressive Mood and It Is Moderated by Self-Regulation: Evidence From Self-Report and Resting EEG Assessments

Atakan M Akil  1   2 , Adrienn Ujhelyi  2 , H N Alexander Logemann  2
Affiliations

Exposure to Depression Memes on Social Media Increases Depressive Mood and It Is Moderated by Self-Regulation: Evidence From Self-Report and Resting EEG Assessments

Atakan M Akil et al. Front Psychol. .

Erratum in

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the effects of depression memes, spread mainly on social media, on depressive mood, and the moderating role of self-regulation based on self-report and electrophysiological (resting EEG frontal alpha asymmetry) assessments. We conducted a semi-online crossover study; first, we collected brain activity data from healthy young adults (n = 32) who were subsequently provided a link to the online experiment. Each participant participated in both the neutral and meme conditions. We also evaluated their level of depressive mood immediately before and after exposure to the stimuli. We further conducted a series of linear mixed effects model analyses and found that depression memes contributed to an increase in depressive symptoms. Specifically, lack of emotional clarity, difficulties in goal-directed behaviors in emotional distress, and impulse control difficulties were linked to greater depressive mood in the case of exposure to depression memes compared with neutral images. However, time interactions were insignificant. These results mainly indicate the centrality of behavioral problems during times of emotional distress caused by depression memes. Lastly, although frontal alpha asymmetry did not predict a change in depressive mood or significantly differ across conditions, lower inhibitory control may result in increased processing of depression memes as negative stimuli. This result is consistent with our self-report results (e.g., impulsivity) as well as other related studies in the literature. However, further research is needed to verify these frontal alpha asymmetry results.

Keywords: EEG; depression memes; emotion regulation; frontal alpha asymmetry; internet; self-regulation; social media.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
An example of the procedure with counterbalanced condition order and randomized stimuli order.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The effects of depression memes on depressive mood, compared with neutral images, when the covariate is lack of emotional clarity, difficulties in goal-directed behaviors during emotional distress, and impulse control difficulties.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The effects of depression memes on depressive mood, compared with neutral images, when the covariate is non-acceptance of emotional responses and limited access to adaptive emotion regulation strategies.
Figure 4
Figure 4
The effects of depression memes on depressive mood compared with neutral images when the covariate is eyes open and eyes closed frontal alpha asymmetry as a neural marker of self-regulation.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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