Logged in and Spaced out: Exploring Social Media and Maladaptive Daydreaming as Co-occurring Behavioural Addictions

Written by: Clarisse Kennedy

Introduction

Where did all your time go? Were you doing things, or thinking about doing those things. Both problematic social media use—the compulsive habit of consuming online media—and maladaptive daydreaming—a behaviour of excessive fantasizing—are serious disruptions to the balanced lifestyle. Especially emerging among the younger generation, these conditions quickly reach the intensity of addictions, and when they appear together, their symptoms augment, carrying an unresolving and detrimental impact on the individual.

About Problematic Social Media Use

The average Canadian teenager spends 4.2 hours a day on social media (Yakhnis et al., 2025), watching popular content, interacting with other users, and scrolling short form videos. In recent years, excessive daily consumption of short form videos, such as Instagram Reels and Tik Toks, has risen among youth (Mona et al., 2026). This problematic social media use has been linked to reduced productivity, disruptions to interpersonal relationships, poor self-perception, and mental disorders such as anxiety and depression (Yakhnis et al., 2025). So, why do we keep scrolling then?

Why You Cannot Stop Scrolling

Like nicotine, alcohol, and the slot machine, social media is addictive. Addiction is largely ruled by a particular brain chemical, the neurotransmitter dopamine. This chemical is responsible for the sensation of pleasure, and the brain absolutely loves it. If dopamine is released when engaging in an activity, making it a pleasurable experience, an individual will want to repeat the activity again to experience more pleasure. Additionally, in anticipation of doing an activity associated with pleasure, the brain will release more dopamine. This creates a feedback loop, encouraging the individual to repeat the activity over and over. The dopamine feedback loop is responsible for why you cannot eat only one potato chip—you know it will be pleasurable when you eat another! That is also how addiction happens; the brain’s want becomes a compulsive need, even if doing the activity culminates in negative consequences.

In the case of social media addiction, watching videos, for example, is a dopamine-packed reward for the brain. Therefore, scrolling to new content brings the anticipation of getting another reward, and this prediction of pleasure further releases dopamine. Even if the next video is not interesting, the anticipation of reward from scrolling again keeps the activity engaging and pleasurable. On top of all that, social media has rewarding stimuli such as notifications, occurring randomly but frequently. As both receiving a notification and the anticipation of receiving one trigger a release of dopamine, individuals feel encouraged to check their phones often to get a quick dose of pleasure.

Simply put, problematic social media use is cut out to become an addiction. While there are several rubrics to access addiction, the essential qualifications are as follows: a mood boost with consumption, a mood plummet from withdrawal, intense symptoms from craving, increased tolerance, immense difficulty with self-restraint, and most importantly, excessive use that intrudes on one’s personal, social, and occupational affairs (Macit et al., 2018). Problematic social media use easily meets this criteria. Individuals experience withdrawal symptoms such as restlessness and shortened attention span, and the longer and more frequent periods of consumption from built-up tolerance results in an excessive loss of time and focus in one’s day. The compulsive urge to consume online content makes self-moderation difficult, distressing many individuals who wish to abstain from the habit.

About Maladaptive Daydreaming

Maladaptive daydreaming is a behaviour characterized by vivid, immersive daydreaming that provides the individual with entertainment and escapism. The behaviour is considered maladaptive because it is fundamentally an unhealthy coping mechanism that is compulsive, excessive, and disrupting to one’s responsibilities. The daydreams themselves are described as complex, gratifying daydreams that often feature fantasy-based scenarios where the individual lives as an idealized or alternate version of themself. These daydreams provide the individual with immersion and enjoyment (Mansuklal et al., 2025), which makes the behaviour highly pleasurable, and highly absorbing of their time, impairing social, occupational, and personal life. 

Daydreaming as an Addiction

The exact cause of maladaptive daydreaming is not known. It has been identified as a coping mechanism for trauma, but also appears in individuals without major trauma. Some studies show a correlation to neurodivergence and obsessive-compulsive disorder (Mansuklal et al., 2025). It can be assumed that maladaptive daydreaming involves dopamine release because of the immense pleasure and engagement individuals derive from their daydreams. In addition, exposure to music and media can heighten the daydreaming intensity, with music and media being triggers for the behaviour (Pietkiewicz et al., 2018) and supporting immersion in fantasizing (Somer, 2024).

Maladaptive daydreaming can be categorized as a behavioural addiction as it meets the essential qualifications previously outlined. Of course, daydreaming is a mood booster, but disruption to the activity leaves individuals feeling irritable and impatient for another moment to resume daydreaming. Tolerance prolongs time spent daydreaming, and self-moderation is rendered difficult as the onset of daydreams becomes uncontrollable, with individuals slipping into daydreams unconsciously. The resulting self-isolation and neglect of responsibilities impacts the individual’s personal, social, and occupational affairs.

Putting Two Together

Interestingly, maladaptive daydreaming addiction manifests similarly to social media addiction. Beyond the obvious self-isolation and lifestyle disruption they both cause, the conditions have other unique features in common. Particularly of interest, both conditions often result in degraded esteem in their identity, as well as shame stemming from a sense of wasted potential. Furthermore, social media can enhance the immersion of maladaptive daydreaming. Due to these similarities, maladaptive daydreaming and problematic social media use can greatly augment each other’s severity when co-occurring.

Both social media and daydreaming can alter the individual’s esteem in their identity. Individuals who daydream maladaptively often have fantasy, idealized versions of themselves that succeed in their imagined scenarios, as a way to cope with the individual’s real life sense of inferiority (Renzi et al., 2025). Similarly, online culture silently promotes hiding any imperfections from being shown in public posts, such as through careful image editing and curation. Consequently, individuals in online spaces often stray from their true identities in favour of displaying an idealized side of their life. With success in media revolving around factors such as likes, fame, and appearance—all features that are relevant solely online or that can be fabricated through hiding imperfections—individuals may find they are only praised online for aspects of themselves that do not exist in the real world (Macit et al., 2018), and will feel their true identity is inadequate. Narcissism, anxiety, and depression can emerge from this distorted self-esteem, with links to these three conditions noted for both maladaptive daydreaming (Mansuklal et al., 2025) and problematic social media use (Macit et al., 2018). 

Shame commonly occurs alongside addiction, usually due to the stigmatization of substance use and financially straining habits such as gambling. However, shame stemming from problematic social media use and maladaptive daydreaming does not typically arise from stigma, but rather from an individual’s feeling of wasted potential. Both conditions occupy significant time, causing individuals to neglect their personal, social, and occupational responsibilities. Individuals may feel shame from a sense that they have irreparably fallen behind because of their lack of productivity and social connection, especially in contrast to the productivity and socializing they view on social media or in their fantasies (Pietkiewicz et al., 2018). They may feel they are not good enough to achieve their goals or unequipped to socialize with others, a mentality which encourages further escapism and reduced motivation to end their addictions.

While a daydream can commence on its own, in cases of individuals with co-occurring problematic social media use and maladaptive daydreaming, individuals report that consuming media such as movies, social media, pornography, and music, can help start a daydream and support their immersion throughout it. Theories behind this phenomenon could be that media provides creative, idealized scenarios that can be imagined (Pietkiewicz et al., 2018), and that music triggers visual mental imagery (Somer, 2024). For example, watching celebrity content could inspire daydreams about being famous, and high-energy music in the background of videos could trigger vivid, thrilling immersion. In a patient case-study, excessive internet usage emerged after excessive daydreaming commenced, as the many forms of media on the internet supported deeper engagement in the individual’s daydreams (Pietkiewicz et al., 2018).

So, what does this mean?

With this connection between media consumption and daydreaming, it is not uncommon for individuals to simultaneously experience problematic social media use and maladaptive daydreaming. Unfortunately, their co-occurrence can significantly worsen the outcomes brought on by both conditions. Their mutual influence on identity means poor self-esteem caused by maladaptive daydreaming can be further degraded by idealism in online culture, and shame from wasted potential derived from social media can be augmented by maladaptive daydreaming. Individuals trying to reduce or quit the addictions thus experience more difficulty in minimizing the intensity of their symptoms, and may see that a relapse for one addiction can easily trigger a relapse into the other.

This begs the question of what can be done to address these interconnected behavioural addictions. Perhaps further research into the cause and treatment of maladaptive daydreaming could protect individuals who daydream from being predisposed to developing problematic social media use. Stricter rules could be established to prohibit features of social media that are designed to addict our brains. Evidently, awareness and empathy for individuals experiencing both addictions will bring us closer to definite solutions.

This article was a ten minute read. Take a moment to know where your time went— to you, spent learning something valuable. Remember to log out, space in, and keep choosing the real world.

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References

Macit, H. B., Macit, G., & Güngör, O. (2018). A research on social media addiction and dopamine driven feedback. Journal of Mehmet Akif Ersoy University Economics and Administrative Sciences Faculty, 5(3), 882–897. https://doi.org/10.30798/makuiibf.435845

Mansuklal, S. A., Pascoal, P. M., Somer, E., Costa, I. B., & Andersson, G. (2025). What is known about maladaptive daydreaming? A scoping review. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 32(4), e70104. Wiley Online Library. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpp.70104

Mona, A. E., Roshith, V., Peter, R., Roy, P., Hassan, A., Devika, M., & Trishala, M. (2026). Short video addiction and its impact on cognitive functioning in adolescents and youth: A systematic review. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 31(1). Taylor & Francis Online. https://doi.org/10.1080/02673843.2026.2623337

Pietkiewicz, I. J., Nęcki, S., Bańbura, A., & Tomalski, R. (2018). Maladaptive daydreaming as a new form of behavioral addiction. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 7(3), 838–843. AKJournals. https://doi.org/10.1556/2006.7.2018.95

Renzi, A., & Mariani, R. (2025). What is the relationship between narcissism and maladaptive daydreaming? The role of defense mechanisms as mediators. Psychiatric Research and Clinical Practice, 7(3), 156–164. Wiley Online Library. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.prcp.20250018

Somer, E. (2024). Calling the tune in maladaptive daydreaming: The impact of music on the experience of compulsive fantasizing. Psychology of Music, 52(6). https://doi.org/10.1177/03057356231222290

Yakhnis, I., & Cooper, M. (2025). Associations between social media use, personal screen time, and Mental Health Indicators among Canadian youth. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f31a311d93d0f2e28aaf04a/t/68e3ddec663c0934fc55798d/1759763948764/Social+Media+%26+Youth+Mental+Health.pdf