TikTok use versus TikTok self-control failure: Investigating relationships with well-being, academic performance, bedtime procrastination, and sleep quality

With the global rise of TikTok popularity, the research on how TikTok use may affect its users is still limited. We aimed to contribute to this research by taking a novel approach: distinguishing between general TikTok use (duration and frequency) and TikTok self-control failure. We expected that using TikTok when it conflicts with other important goals or tasks (TikTok self-control failure) would be more strongly and negatively linked to well-being, academic performance, bedtime procrastination, and sleep quality as compared to general TikTok use. We tested our expectations in two samples: adolescents (N₁ = 249) and university students (N₂ = 222) during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. We found interesting relationships between TikTok use, TikTok self-control failure, and the outcome variables. However, our hypothesis was confirmed in both studies only for bedtime procrastination. We argue that this might be because bedtime procrastination could be a more ‘proximal’ outcome variable compared to the other tested variables. The present research offers empirical data useful for discussions regarding the potential negative effects of TikTok use on young people. It also shows that differentiating between general measures of social media use (i.e., duration and frequency) and a measure of social media self-control failure might provide more detailed insights into the relationships between variables of interest for media researchers.