<p>Although many studies have explored the risk factors for short-video addiction, few have examined the bidirectional longitudinal relationship between this addiction and relative deprivation, and the underlying psychological mechanisms remain underexplored. A questionnaire was distributed to a large sample of 1,034 adolescents at three time points to investigate the relationship between relative deprivation and short-video addiction and the role of impulse control in mediating this relationship. The results obtained from random intercept cross-lagged panel models indicated that relative deprivation was related to subsequent short-video addiction (<i>β</i>_T1→T2 = 0.11, <i>p</i> &lt; .001; <i>β</i>_T2→T3 = 0.19, <i>p</i> &lt; .001), whereas short-video addiction at T2 was significantly related to relative deprivation at T3 (<i>β</i> = 0.08, <i>p</i> = .004). Moreover, impulse control played a mediating role in the path from relative deprivation to short-video addiction but not in the path from short-video addiction to relative deprivation (indirect effect = 0.032, <i>p</i> = .006). This study not only highlights the dynamic relationships among relative deprivation, impulse control and short-video addiction but also provides important theoretical and empirical support for the development of interventions aimed at preventing short-video addiction.</p>