In our previous post at AddictionNews, we examined a study from India suggesting a novel solution for smartphone addiction. Everything about the study seemed fabricated, from the names of the authors to the measures of smartphone addiction and the unlikely improvement resulting from a video intervention created by one of the authors. The effort told us little about the causes of, and cures for, smartphone addiction.

Today, we examine a completely different kind of study, from the School of Educational and Psychological Science at Hefei Normal University, and the School of Psychology at Tianjin Normal University, that explores the relationship between childhood trauma and short-video addiction. 

Instead of dubious measures of smartphone addiction, the researchers relied upon the Smartphone Addiction Scale — Short Revision (SAS-SR), using a 6-point Likert affinity scale from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” They then divided the 2,591 college students into a high-risk group and a low-risk group for short-video addiction.

Likewise, childhood trauma was measured using a 5-point Likert scale from “never true” to “very often true,” using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire — Short Form (CTQ-SF). The form is divided into five sections:

• physical abuse
• emotional abuse
• sexual abuse
• physical neglect
• emotional neglect

Typically, the questions are quite blunt, such as, “Have you ever been physically abused?” and, “Have you suffered due to emotional neglect?” Students were grouped into four abuse categories — physical, sexual, emotional, or none.

The students then underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRIs) to measure the gray matter volume of the regions of the brain. The Chinese researchers were quite thorough:

[W]e investigated the association between short video addiction symptoms and gray matter volume… Maternal education, paternal education, age at MRI scan, gender, and total intracranial volume were included as covariates.

In making the connection between childhood trauma and short-video addiction, researchers first found that “total scores in childhood trauma” were positively correlated with the tendency for short-video addiction. The scores in each abuse sub-category were also positively correlated with short-video addiction. These observations held true even when controlling for age, gender, and level of paternal and maternal education.

The 2,591 students participated in three different data sets, allowing the researchers to replicate the findings. I apologize that some of the findings concerning gray matter volume are beyond my ability to summarize. I will do my best to let the researchers’ words speak for themselves:

[C]hildhood trauma, especially physical neglect, influences the development of short-video addiction via reshaping the morphological volume of prefrontal cortex in individuals with childhood adverse experiences.

Some of the implications of the study are peripheral, others are primary. Gender differences were pronounced in the first two, larger studies, with males much more susceptible to smartphone addiction than females. In the third, smaller study, there was no gender difference of significance.

Both cohorts — high-risk of addiction and low-risk of addiction — had a strong correlation between childhood trauma and short-video addiction. This was true across all three studies. Again, I will let the researchers explain the implications of what they found in their own words:

Furthermore, we observed distinct relationships between childhood trauma and short video addiction symptoms in high-risk versus low-risk groups, and identified a potential neural pathway through which childhood trauma affects short video addiction symptoms. Moreover, this neural pathway was specific to individuals with trauma. These findings provide the first evidence supporting the impact of childhood trauma on behavioral addiction, particularly short video addiction, and underscore the morphological substrate underlying the development of short video addiction.

This is some pretty amazing research, using MRIs to tease out the relationship between childhood abuse and short video addiction. The authors say they are “filling a gap regarding the link between childhood adverse experiences and mental health.” They describe the need to displace the stress of adverse childhood experiences:

To alleviate negative emotions, individuals may turn to behaviors like excessive short video consumption, which offers immediate gratification… [S]tructural adaptations in these [brain] regions may result from sustained exposure to situational triggers, emotional dysregulation, and reward-seeking behaviors.

Interestingly, the high-risk of video addiction cohort had no correlation between emotional abuse and addiction — only between physical abuse and addiction. It could be they were more forgiving toward emotional abuse and more able to “shake it off.” The study did not control for other factors in gray matter volume, such as substance abuse, or low family income. And they did not measure changes over time.

Good science advances the cause, even if the hypothesis and the results don’t match —especially when the hypothesis and results don’t match. It always tips the researcher to something new and startling they perhaps weren’t looking for. This team of researchers deserves a round of applause for a thorough, well-documented excursion into the neurodynamics of childhood abuse and subsequent addiction.

Written by Steve O’Keefe. First published June 10, 2025.

Sources:

“The impact of childhood trauma on short video addiction: psychological and morphological correlates,” Scientific Reports, May 30, 2025.

“The Smartphone Addiction Scale: Development and Validation of a Short Version for Adolescents,” PLoS One, December 31, 2013.

“The Childhood Trauma Questionnaire — Short Form (CTQ-SF) used with adolescents — methodological report from clinical and community samples,” Journal of Childhood and Adolescent Trauma, March 30, 2022.

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