Doomscrolling and mental well-being in social media users: A serial mediation through mindfulness and secondary traumatic stress.

Considering that large-scale events such as natural disasters, epidemics, and wars affect people all over the world through online news channels, it is inevitable to investigate the impact of following or avoiding negative news on well-being. This study investigated the effect of doomscrolling on mental well-being and the mediating role of mindfulness and secondary traumatic stress in social media users. A total of 400 Turkish adults completed scales to assess doomscrolling, mental well-being, mindfulness, and secondary traumatic stress. The average age of the participants was 29.42 (SD = 8.38; ranged = 18-65). Structural equation modeling was conducted to examine the mediating roles of mindfulness and secondary traumatic stress in the relationship between doomscrolling and mental well-being. Mindfulness and secondary traumatic stress fully mediated the relationship between doomscrolling and mental well-being. The results are discussed in light of existing knowledge of doomscrolling, mental well-being, mindfulness, and secondary traumatic stress. High levels of doomscrolling, which is related to an individual's mental well-being, can predict the individual's distraction from the here and now and fixation on negative news. This situation, in which mindfulness is low, is related to the individual's indirect traumatization and increased secondary traumatic stress symptoms in the face of the negative news he/she follows.

Self-Efficacy, Self-Love, and Fear of Compassion Mediate the Effect of Attachment Styles on Life Satisfaction: A Serial Mediation Analysis.

This study examined the effect of attachment styles on the life satisfaction of adults and the serial mediating effect of self-efficacy, self-love, and fear of compassion in this effect for the first time in the literature to the best of our knowledge. The study group consisted of a total of 639 adults. As a result of the study, it is seen that secure attachment affects life satisfaction positively. This process is mediated by the variables of high self-efficacy, high self-love, and low fear of compassion. However, avoidant attachment seems to negatively affect life satisfaction. This process is mediated by low self-efficacy, low self-love, and high fear of compassion variables. Apart from these results, it was observed that anxious-ambivalent attachment negatively affected life satisfaction, but this relationship was not mediated by self-efficacy, self-love, and fear of compassion. This result may be due to the fact that people with anxious-ambivalent attachment style perceive others positively despite seeing themselves as worthless and inadequate. These people may not want to show compassion for themselves because they have low self-worth, but they may show compassion for others because they find them valuable.