Emotion dysregulation and adolescents’ preference for online social interactions: The moderating role of gender

The number of young social media users is increasing year after year, animating the scholar debate about excessive Internet use and its effects. Boys and girls’ different social media use motives and purposes might reflect the way in which they display their emotions, indeed increasing attention has been paid to emotion dysregulation role in addictive behaviors. This study aimed at exploring the moderating role of gender on the relation between difficulties in emotion regulation and problematic preference for online social interactions. 693 Italian adolescents (55% female and 45% male; mean age = 16+1.597) were involved in the study. Results showed that gender differently moderated the relationship between emotion dysregulation and preference for web-mediated interactions in males and females: girls with higher difficulties in regulation of emotional states did not prefer online social interactions. On the contrary, boys’ problematic preference for web-mediated interactions always increased for difficulties in acceptance, understanding, control, and modulating negative emotions.