Moral Disengagement as a Mediator between Problematic Social Media Use and Antisocial Behavior among Young Adults

Abstract

Moral disengagement, the cognitive maneuvers through which conduct that would ordinarily be inhibited by self-sanction is reconstrued as acceptable, has been proposed as a moral-cognitive correlate of both problematic social media use and antisocial conduct, but the three constructs have rarely been examined together in young adults, and evidence on this configuration among Pakistani young adults was not located. The present study therefore examined whether moral disengagement statistically mediates the association between problematic social media use and antisocial behavior. A cross-sectional correlational design with simple mediation analysis was used with Pakistani young adults enrolled in English-medium higher education institutions in Lahore, recruited through non-probability purposive sampling using a self-administered English questionnaire. Problematic social media use was measured with the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale, moral disengagement with the short form of the Propensity to Morally Disengage Scale, and antisocial behavior with the Subtypes of Antisocial Behavior Questionnaire scored as a total; all measures showed acceptable internal consistency. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlations, and the PROCESS macro for simple mediation, with the indirect effect evaluated through a percentile bootstrap confidence interval. All three variables were positively and significantly correlated, and the indirect association through moral disengagement was supported, its confidence interval excluding zero, although it was modest and the direct association remained significant. The findings are consistent with a positive indirect association through moral disengagement, a pattern described as partial statistical mediation. Because the design is cross-sectional, they cannot establish temporal precedence or causality.