Excessive smartphone users show heightened brain reactivity to social exclusion

A recent study published in Computers in Human Behavior suggests that individuals who excessively use their smartphones display heightened brain activity in regions associated with social pain when they experience social exclusion. The findings provide evidence that hypersensitivity to social rejection may be a key psychological factor driving compulsive digital connectivity. These neural differences highlight the importance of considering social and emotional vulnerabilities when trying to understand why some people struggle to control their smartphone usage.

Excessive smartphone use is increasingly viewed as a pattern of behavior that closely resembles other forms of addiction. Scientific inquiry into this condition has historically focused on cognitive control or the brain’s reward systems. This approach often treats the device as a source of dopamine, similar to how one might study gaming or substance use. However, this perspective often overlooks the inherently social nature of mobile technology.

Smartphones are primary tools for maintaining a sense of belonging and connecting with others. The drive to stay connected may stem from a need to avoid the negative feelings associated with isolation. Consequently, the researchers aimed to investigate the socio-cognitive aspects of this condition. They sought to understand if heavy users process social rejection differently than those with more moderate usage habits.

“This study was motivated by the observation that research on excessive smartphone use has focused predominantly on reward processing and cognitive control, while social cognitive mechanisms, remain underexplored,” said study author Robert Christian Wolf, deputy director at the Department of General Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at Heidelberg University Hospital.

“Given that many smartphone behaviors are inherently social, we aimed to address this gap by examining how individuals with excessive smartphone use process socially aversive experiences at the neural level. We also sought to clarify how concepts such as social exclusion, social pain, and fear of missing out (FOMO) might relate to excessive smartphone use within an established framework for behavioral addictions.”

To investigate these questions, the research team recruited 41 participants between the ages of 18 and 30. All participants were right-handed and had no history of neurological or mental illness. The researchers used the short form of the Smartphone Addiction Scale to separate the participants into two distinct groups.

The first group consisted of 23 individuals identified as having excessive smartphone use. This classification was based on their self-reported lack of control over phone usage and the resulting interference with their daily lives. The second group consisted of 18 participants who served as a control group with typical smartphone habits.

The researchers employed functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure brain activity. This technology tracks changes in blood flow to different areas of the brain, serving as a proxy for neural activation. While inside the scanner, each participant completed a task known as the Cyberball paradigm.

Cyberball is a virtual ball-tossing game designed to simulate social interaction and subsequent rejection. Participants were told they were playing online with two other real people. To increase the realism of the scenario, the game displayed AI-generated photographs of the supposed other players.

The experiment was divided into blocks of inclusion and exclusion. During the inclusion phases, the virtual players threw the ball to the participant with equal frequency. In the exclusion phases, the virtual players stopped throwing the ball to the participant entirely. This manipulation effectively created a sensation of being ignored or ostracized.

The imaging data revealed distinct differences in how the two groups processed this social rejection. When compared to the inclusion phase, the excessive smartphone use group showed significantly increased activity in the right middle cingulate cortex during exclusion. This heightened activity extended into the right superior frontal cortex.

The middle cingulate cortex is a region of the brain frequently associated with the processing of negative emotions. It is part of the neural network that processes the “affective” or unpleasant component of pain. Increased activation here suggests that the excessive users may have experienced the social exclusion as more emotionally distressing or painful.

In contrast, the control group exhibited a different pattern of brain activity. During the exclusion phase, these individuals showed increased activation in the left superior parietal cortex. This region is typically involved in sensory processing and attention management rather than emotional pain processing.

The researchers also analyzed the relationship between brain activity and specific neurotransmitter systems. They compared the functional imaging data with standardized maps of chemical receptors in the brain. This analysis indicated that dopaminergic and serotonergic systems were significantly involved in the neural response to exclusion for all participants.

In addition to the biological measures, the study collected psychometric data. Participants completed the Fear of Missing Out Scale and the Smartphone Addiction Inventory. The results confirmed that the excessive use group scored significantly higher on measures of “fear of missing out,” or FOMO.

The researchers also found a correlation between brain activity and specific addiction symptoms. Activity in the left superior parietal cortex was positively associated with functional impairment scores in the excessive use group. This implies a link between how the brain processes social information and the degree to which phone use disrupts daily functioning.

The researchers propose that the hyperactivity in the middle cingulate cortex indicates a specific vulnerability. If individuals with excessive smartphone use experience social rejection as more painful, they may be more motivated to avoid it. The smartphone then becomes a safety mechanism to ensure constant social inclusion and prevent this distress.

“Our findings suggest that people who use smartphones excessively may experience social exclusion as more emotionally painful at a neural level,” Wolf told PsyPost. “This heightened sensitivity may promote increased reliance on smartphones as a primary strategy to preserve social connectedness or to avert feelings of exclusion. In everyday terms, excessive smartphone use may be driven less by enjoyment and more by efforts to regulate distress associated with perceived or anticipated social disconnection.”

This interpretation aligns with the concept that fear of missing out acts as a driving force for connectivity. FOMO represents the apprehension that others are having rewarding experiences from which one is absent. While FOMO scores were higher in the excessive use group, they did not directly correlate with the brain activity changes observed during the specific moment of exclusion.

“The observed effects are modest but meaningful, as they emerge consistently in brain regions known to process social pain and cognitive control,” Wolf said. “Rather than reflecting neural dysfunction in a pathological sense, the results indicate subtle differences in how social experiences are processed. These neural biases may accumulate over time and contribute to the persistence of excessive smartphone use.”

But as with all research, there are some limitations. The sample size was relatively small, which can limit the ability to generalize the findings to the broader population. Additionally, the study relied on a cross-sectional design. This means it captured a snapshot of time and cannot determine cause and effect.

“A key caveat is that our findings do not imply that smartphones themselves cause heightened social pain or that excessive smartphone use constitutes a clinical condition (i.e. a manifest behavioral addiction) in all circumstances,” Wolf noted. “The cross-sectional design also precludes causal conclusions about whether sensitivity to social exclusion leads to excessive smartphone use or vice versa. Moreover, the Cyberball task employed in our study represents social exclusion in a relatively simplified and artificial manner, which may not fully capture the complexity of real-world social interactions.”

“Future research should adopt longitudinal and experimental designs to clarify causal pathways between social exclusion sensitivity, FOMO, and excessive smartphone use. We are particularly interested in designs that capture anticipatory social processes and in smartphone-use modulation studies, such as restriction phases. Integrating ecological and real-world social interaction measures will be essential for improving external validity.”

“This study underscores the importance of conceptualizing excessive smartphone use within a social-cognitive and affective framework, in which reward-driven behavior is embedded in the pursuit and maintenance of social reward,” Wolf explained. “By integrating neural, psychometric, and neurochemical analyses, we aim to contribute to a more comprehensive model of excessive smartphone use, highlighting social vulnerability as a potential target for more effective prevention and intervention strategies, especially for individuals at elevated risk of addictive behavior.”

The study, “Neural correlates of social exclusion in individuals with excessive smartphone use,” was authored by Gudrun M. Henemann, Mike M. Schmitgen, Sophie H. Haage, Jakob P. Rosero, Patrick Bach, Nadine D. Wolf, Julian Koenig, and Robert C. Wolf.