<p>With the rise of short-form video platforms and personalized recommendation algorithms, the problematic use of short-form video (PUSV) has been found to be prevalent. The Interaction of Person-Affect-Cognition-Execution (I-PACE) model suggests that individuals’ problematic online use results from the interaction of multiple components, including personality, affect, cognition, and execution. Despite increasing research attention, better knowledge of the interplay among various affective/cognitive functions and PUSV is required. This study recruited 561 short-video users (290 females, 271 males) to fill out an online questionnaire and used latent profile analysis and network analysis to explore whether and how depression, anxiety, automatic responses, routine behavior, attention bias, and PUSV are interrelated. Based on the three dimensions of the Problematic Short-form Video Usage Test, namely “Performance Problem (PP),” “Social Problem (SP),” and “Loss of Control (LC),” latent profile analysis was conducted to group short-form video users into “high-risk users” (38.3%) and “low-risk users” (61.7%). Network analysis of the scale scores for the “high-risk group” revealed that anxiety, automaticity, attention bias, and depression were the central nodes in this network. The strongest edges included depression-anxiety, automaticity-routine, bias-automaticity, LC-bias, SP-bias, LC-automaticity, and PP-SP. Additionally, the high-risk and low-risk users showed different patterns of network structure of PUSV with depression, anxiety, automaticity, routine, and value driven attention bias. This study highlights that dysregulation of affective or cognitive components is the crucial factor associated with a higher risk of developing PUSV, offering significant implications for early prevention.</p>