organization as a valid behavior disorder. It can lead to impairments of people’s abilities to operate in daily life, and could be

displayed as deteriorations in work performance, academic performance, social skills, and insomnia. As mobile phone becomes

the major vehicle used by people to surf online for all kinds of activities in recent years, it is essential to take a deep-dive into

the relationship between behavioral addiction and mobile applications, to examine and investigate the causal relationship

between the two, and the strength of lower-level, potentially addictive factors in forming impacts on users’ behaviors.

Among these applications, short-form video apps such as TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Vimeo, WeChat, Triller, YouTube

shorts, Mojo, Mitron and so on, are notably the most popular kind of apps with users around the world. These short-form video

apps are easy to use and designed with entertainment in mind, supplying short videos ranging from 30 seconds to 3 minutes that

can be played one after another, bringing users an experience of endless fun- and yet at the same time, enticing users to repeat

their using behavior at a higher frequency and for a longer duration, and ultimately users may become overly rely on the apps,

or even develop a “TikTok brain” that constantly seeks instant gratification, as identified in some studies.

TikTok, an application that combines Musical.ly and TikTok, was launched and operated by Chinese company ByteDance

in 2016, and swept across the world in a short period of time. The majority of its users are generations born between 1995 and

2000 and beyond, with 85% of users under the age of 24. In 2018, it was downloaded more than 45 million times on the Apple

App Store, championing the number of downloads among mobile apps all over the world that year. In Q1 2022, its number of

global downloads reached a new high, surpassing Instagram and becoming the most popular short-form video app in the world.

The powerful appeal of “TikTok-Make your day” keeps users refreshing their “For You” feed constantly, and its algorithm can

accurately deliver relevant content based on user characteristics. It is rated as the most addictive app.

But why do people stick to TikTok, and depend on TikTok to the point of behavioral addiction? The experience that people

are so obsessed with the usage of software technology and unable to extricate themselves is described as cognitive absorption

by Agarwal and Karahanna. The concept of cognitive absorption emphasizes that the greatest gain from using technology is the

experience during the process, instead of the outcome per se. People do not focus only on what they get from using the software

technology, but pay more attention to the feelings and experiences during the using process, considering them as the most

valuable part. Studies showed that cognitive absorption can drive people to continue using a specific software, but for some

users, long-term and heavy usage may lead to compulsive usage or even behavioral addiction.

      In view of the above, it is a reasonable extension of theories to further explore the relationship between cognitive absorption and short-form video apps behavioral addiction. While existing studies often investigate behavioral addiction in terms of avoidance, depression, stress, sense of loneliness, and social impairment, there is a relative lack of study on behavioral

addiction from the perspective of user experience, which requires further investigation. On the other hand, there is also a lack

of understanding of the relationship between user experience and emotional factors, and behavioral addictions. In other words,

there is a lack of examination and comparison regarding the individual impacts of cognitive absorption, nomophobia, and

loneliness on behavioral addiction. Accordingly, two questions that this research aims to answer. First, what is the relationship

between cognitive absorption and short-form video apps dependence, and behavioral addiction? Second, what is the individual

impact of cognitive absorption, nomophobia, and loneliness on short-form video app dependence and behavioral addiction and

how are their strengths ranked in forming behavioral addictions?

This study uses cognitive absorption as the theoretical basis to develop a research model to explain people’s behavioral

addiction to short-form video apps. Cognitive absorption was operationalized as a second-order construct, combining a

first-order reflective pattern and a second-order formative pattern (reflective-formative type), and is composed of four firstorder

reflective dimensions- heightened enjoyment, focus immersion, temporal dissociation, and curiosity. At the same time,

nomophobia and loneliness are also regarded as constructs directly related to behavioral addiction to compare the level of

impact of different constructs on behavioral addiction.

For data collection, the study solicited respondents on PTT (https://term.ptt.cc/), one of the largest e-bulletin board systems

in Taiwan, to fill in an online questionnaire and then selected only those that were qualified for the purpose of this study.

169 respondents among the 327 respondents collected use TikTok every day, therefore these 169 respondents were taken as

the material for further data analysis. More than 60% of the respondents are under the age of 30, and more than 60% of the

respondents are students. Partial least squares technology with SmartPLS 4.0 was used for analysis.

The results show that cognitive absorption has the greatest impact on behavioral addiction, followed by nomophobia and

loneliness. This means that these young users depend on TikTok not because they are lonely, but because of the cognitive

absorption that they experience when using TikTok- it has the greatest impact on their behavioral addiction. Nomophobia comes

in as the second greatest factor in causing behavioral addiction, echoing previous studies to encourage more mobile-free anxiety

outcomes.

The study analyzes the dependence and behavioral addiction of short-form video apps from a different perspective and

yielded results different from conventional wisdom. A more traditional line of research believes that the dependence on these

platforms of the younger generation stems from loneliness or anxiety, but this study found that cognitive absorption, an optimal

experience, is the most powerful drive toward behavioral addiction to short-form video apps. Cognitive absorption, mostly,

has been associated with positive effects in the discussion of technology usage. However, the findings of this study further

acknowledged that cognitive absorption could be the catalyst of negative results of technology usage. The research supplements

people’s understanding of the relationship between cognitive absorption and the negative effects of technology usage so that

people can better control their technology-using behavior and reduce the risk of behavioral addiction.

The study contributed significantly to both theory and practice. It provides evidence to extend existing theories about

cognitive absorption from the scenario of fixed, location-bound desktop computers to mobile phones. It also guides for

behavioral therapy institutions to understand behavioral addictions from the perspective of using experience, and develop

effective strategies for management and treatment.

However, as the study focuses on TikTok, the results may not be applicable to other short-form video apps, since each

short-form video app has its own features and target audience, and may trigger different psychological and behavioral effects on

users. It is important to bear this in mind when attempting to extrapolate the results of the study to other short-form video apps

or user groups.