On short video platforms, individuals can not only passively browse videos but also actively engage in behaviors such as liking and commenting on videos. However, the mechanisms by how active and passive usage of short videos affect subjective well-being remains unclear. Thus, this study aims to explore these mechanisms through path analysis and network analysis. We employed the Short Video Usage Questionnaire, Subjective Well-Being Scale, and Interaction Anxiety Scale to survey 1086 participants. The results indicated (1) the active usage positively predicted life satisfaction and positive affect, while passive usage failed to predict any of them. (2) Social anxiety mediated the relationship between short video usage and subjective well-being. Active usage enhanced life satisfaction and positive affect by alleviating social anxiety, while reducing negative affect by decreasing social anxiety. At the same time, passive usage reduced life satisfaction and positive affect by exacerbating social anxiety while increasing negative affect by intensifying social anxiety. (3) Network analysis revealed that “live interaction” behavior was a core activity for alleviating social anxiety and enhancing subjective well-being. The findings highlight the significant role of short video usage in subjective well-being and provide empirical evidence to guide users in the rational and positive usage of short video platforms.

Suicidal ideation is one of the strongest predictors of suicide. A large number of studies have illustrated the important effect of impulsivity on suicidal ideation, and behavioral inhibitory control (BIC) is a specific manifestation of impulsivity. The goal of the present study is to evaluate the difference in BIC in response to happy and angry emotions between individuals with or without suicidal ideation to reveal the underlying mechanism of the effect of impulsivity on suicidal ideation when accounting for the effect of emotion. Combining the ERP technique and the two-choice oddball paradigm, a total of 70 college students were recruited to participate in this study. The Beck Scale for Suicidal Ideation–Chinese Version was used to identify whether the participants had suicidal ideation. There were 30 participants in the risky-suicidal ideation (SI) group and 19 participants in the non-suicidal ideation (NSI) group. The results showed that the reaction time of the SI group was longer than that of the NSI group for happy emotions. At the electrophysiological level, the P3 amplitude of the NSI group was larger than that of the SI group regardless of the electrode sites and valence, and the P3 component elicited by angry faces was larger than those elicited by happy faces in the SI group. These findings suggest that individuals without suicidal ideation have better BIC, and the SI group has more difficulty controlling their responses to happy emotions than their responses to angry emotions.

Individuals who with suicide behaviors pay more attention to negative signals than positive ones. However, it is unclear that whether this bias exists when suicide ideators perceive interpersonal stimuli (such as faces with emotion) and the underlying neural mechanism of the attention process. The present study aimed to examine the attentional bias toward emotional facial expressions by employing event-related potentials in a population with suicide ideation. Twenty-five undergraduates with suicide ideation (SI group) and sixteen undergraduates without suicide ideation (NSI group) participated in a modified dot-probe task. Compared to the NSI group, the SI group exhibited: (1) a longer mean reaction time to fearful faces; (2) a larger N1 component to fearful faces; (3) a larger N1 component to the location of sad faces, as well as to the opposite location of fearful faces and happy faces; and (4) a larger N1 component to the contralateral location of happy faces, whereas the NSI group elicited a larger N1 component to the ipsilateral location of happy faces. These results indicated that the SI group was more sensitive to negative emotions (fearful and sad faces) than positive emotions (happy faces), and the negative interpersonal stimuli in suicide ideators was processed at an early attention stage.