2026
By Yijing Yang
Ever sacrificed sleep, a workout plan, or a looming deadline for just one more TikTok? Media entertainment is among the hardest everyday temptations to resist, and TikTok is a particularly relevant case: its swiping design and personalized algorithmic curation make it especially effective at drawing users in even in the presence of conflicting goals. Yet the resulting pleasure may be “spoiled” by guilt, undermining self-worth and intensifying distress.
Theoretical Contribution
Grounded in the Appraisal of Media Use, Self-Control, and Entertainment (AMUSE) model (Reinecke & Meier, 2021), this study pioneers its application in the TikTok context and extends it in two directions. First, it incorporates self-compassion, understood as a less harsh way of relating to oneself in moments of perceived self-regulation failure, a variable largely absent from entertainment research. Second, it addresses an unresolved empirical puzzle: whether guilt simply spoils pleasure, or whether the two co-occur in more complex ways, with prior findings remaining mixed.
Research Questions
The study addresses two overarching questions. First, who is more likely to engage in more intense TikTok use and through what mechanisms—with a focus on the role of trait self-control, automatic use tendencies, and perceived agency? Second, how does momentary goal conflict relate to changes in pleasure and guilt from before to after a TikTok session, and how do trait self-control and self-compassion moderate these within-person dynamics?
Methodological Innovation
The study employs an event-contingent ESM design implemented via a Qualtrics and iOS Shortcuts flow, automatically triggering surveys each time participants open or close TikTok, combined with TikTok data donation. This mixed-method design captures TikTok use and its emotional effects across sessions and individuals with high ecological validity, moving beyond what cross-sectional surveys or experiments can achieve.