Social media addiction has spread rapidly among young people in recent years. Individuals with social media addiction are more likely to avoid and suppress negative emotions instead of reappraising these emotions, which can cause psychological and even physical harm. This study presents a second-order adaptive mental network model to simulate the process of emotion regulation in social media addicts and the impacts of stress and therapy in this process. This network model can use three types of emotion regulation strategies: suppression, avoidance (by escaping to social media), and reappraisal. Using this model, two scenarios for a person with social media addiction are compared: with and without therapy. It is found that if therapy successfully improves the regulation by reappraisal, the use of suppression and avoidance can be reduced. Characteristics of this model were tuned by simulated annealing, using data points estimated from psychological literature, indicating that the model matches well with empirical information. The presented mental network model may also be used for other types of addictions which involve avoidance of emotions, such as alcohol abuse and game addiction.

近年来，社交媒体成瘾在年轻人中迅速蔓延。社交媒体成瘾者更有可能避免和抑制负面情绪，而不是重新评估这些情绪，这可能会造成心理甚至身体伤害。本研究提出了一个二阶适应性心理网络模型来模拟社交媒体成瘾者的情绪调节过程以及压力和治疗在这个过程中的影响。该网络模型可以使用三种类型的情绪调节策略：抑制、回避（通过逃避到社交媒体）和重新评估。使用该模型，比较了社交媒体成瘾者的两种情况：接受治疗和未接受治疗。研究发现，如果治疗通过重新评估成功地改善了调节，则可以减少抑制和回避的使用。该模型的特征通过模拟退火进行调整，使用从心理学文献中估计的数据点，表明该模型与经验信息匹配良好。所呈现的心理网络模型也可用于涉及回避情绪的其他类型的成瘾，例如酗酒和游戏成瘾。