2. Literature Review
2.5. Psychological Consequences of Social Media Engagement
2.5.4. The Mediating Role of Emotions
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can be formed in SNSs, but also explicates the application of the psychological insights into the conceptualization of technology dependency.
Fan et al. (2017) investigated the effects of interactivity (i.e., control, communication, and responsiveness) on engagement, user satisfaction, and
technology dependence to better understand users’ technology utilization behavior.
The researchers conceptualized technology dependence as the proportion of time users choose to use the information technologies, and identified technology
dependence as the intensity of information technologies usage by adopting the notion of proactive stickiness proposed by Wu, Wang, and Tsai (2010). The findings showed that both engagement and user satisfaction have effects on technology dependence.
Specifically, engagement, influenced by interactivity, has a stronger effect on technology dependence, and user satisfaction is affected by engagement and responsiveness of the technology. This indicates that high interactive features and designs of the technology may ensure the higher quality and better utilization of the technology, and that the more users engage with the technology, the more likely they are to rely on the technology led by the immersed media environment. In the sense, the proposed technology dependence model can help technology developers to understand not only what features need to be included in the technology design, but also how to attract users to rely more on and actively use the technology. Following this logic, it is plausible that users will become dependent on communication technology if they experience a high level of engagement. Thus, engagement with social media is expected to have a direct impact on social media dependency.
2.5.4. The Mediating Role of Emotions
In addition, researchers have suggested that emotions are associated with addictive Internet use (Campbell, Cumming, & Hughes, 2006). While pleasant feelings (e.g., excitement, euphoria, or exhilaration) typically amplify addictive patterns of Internet use (Young, 1999), negative mood (e.g., depression) is also a necessary cause of Internet dependency, for users who turn to the Internet to avoid further deteriorating mood (Davis, 2001). As addicted people find more pleasant feelings when online compared to their feelings when offline, they tend to engage more intensely on the Internet; the longer they go without the Internet, the more intense such unpleasant feelings they have. Besides, such attachment or sensation of
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addicts towards the Internet may damage one’s life to some extent, and this can in turn make addicts psychologically long for the euphoria related to the Internet (Young, 1999).
Donnelly and Kuss (2016) investigated the relationships between SNS usage, SNS addiction and depression across the four SNS platforms, including Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and Facebook, by employing a cross-sectional online study. The findings showed that, based on the U&G theory, Instagram use is related to SNS addiction, and that both Instagram use and SNS addiction are predictors of depression.
Instagram use can lead to excessive use because users obtain gratification from enjoying the visual functions of the platform as well as exploring new identities by presenting such online self-image that they wish to promote. Besides, users may have the feelings of pride, euphoria, and self-confidence when receiving likes or comments on their profiles, yet they may have the feelings of despondency and depression if not.
Thus, the more users participate in Instagram, the more likely they are to experience SNS addiction due to gratification-seeking. However, it is noteworthy that such usage may sequentially increase the feelings of depression. As users tend to create more positive self-images on Instagram, exposures to those images may induce such comparisons that users’ may not find their real lives as privileged as others’, which in turn results in dissatisfaction. While the results also indicated there is a relationship between SNS addiction and depression, there is no such relationship between Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat use and SNS addiction or depression. The reason may be that young people migrate from Facebook to other newer SNSs, such as Instagram, and that Twitter is primarily a text-based SNS which users may not receive that much gratification or methodological differences (Donnelly & Kuss, 2016).
By integrating the U&G theory and Media System Dependency theory, Sun, Rubin, and Haridakis (2008) investigated the mediating role of cognitive involvement (i.e., attention and recognition) and affective involvement (i.e., positive and negative affect) in the relationship between demographics, motivations for Internet use and Internet dependency. Through surveying 471 participants, the results showed that young people were more likely to develop Internet dependency than older people, as most of young adults are technologically savvy. While Internet motivations (i.e., substitution, information, social interaction, and control) and involvement (i.e.,
cognitive involvement, positive affect, and negative affect) were significant predictors
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of Internet dependency than demographics, motivation was found to be a stronger precursor of Internet dependency than demographics, and cognitive and affective involvement. Also, as an instrumental Internet orientation (e.g., social interaction and control motivations) was found to be related to cognitive involvement, a ritualized orientation (e.g., substitution motivation) was found to be related more to affective involvement.
Longstreet and Brooks (2017) investigated how a generalized positive
emotional state (i.e., happiness) and a generalized negative emotional state (i.e., stress) affect Internet and social media addiction through life satisfaction by conducting online surveys among 251 participants aged from 18 to 44. The results showed that different emotional states impact life satisfaction differently, and life satisfaction has a significant influence on both types of addictions. While happiness has a positive effect on life satisfaction, stress has a negative influence on life satisfaction. In other words, higher happiness levels are related to greater life satisfaction, yet high stress levels may lead to a decrease in life satisfaction. The findings also suggested that decreases in life satisfaction are related to increased levels of Internet and social media
addiction, because users may turn to the Internet or social media for happiness. In this way, as users experience more pleasant feelings in life, their life satisfaction will increase and the corresponding levels of Internet and social media addiction will decrease. Contrarily, as users have more stress in life, their life satisfaction will decrease, which may then increase their degrees of Internet and social media addiction. Therefore, increased positive emotions (i.e., happiness) and decreased negative emotions (i.e., stress) may be associated with decreased levels of Internet and social media addiction through life satisfaction, which indicates that seeking increased life satisfaction in an alternative way can reduce these addictions (Longstreet & Brooks, 2017).
Altuwairiqi, Kostoulas, Powell, and Ali (2019) examined the relationship between the usage experience of people with a problematic attachment to social media and their associated emotions by conducting a multistage qualitative method:
interviews and diary study. The researchers found that usage experience of
problematic attachment to social media is related to both negative (i.e., sadness, anger, and fear) and positive emotions (i.e., love, joy, and surprise). On one hand, receiving notification, hasty and unconsciously prolonged usage, unconscious disregard,
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unsuccessful self-promotion, missing opportunities, unmet expectations, unconscious interaction, and social comparison can trigger negative emotions; on the other hand, popularity increased, mutuality of interaction, constant connectedness, and passing time can evoke positive emotions. Problematic attachment is related to reliance on resulting positive emotions, which further enhances satisfaction of social media use.
However, such usage as overly relying on social media to self-promote or gain popularity and relatedness may lead to excessive use of social media and accelerate negative emotions. As a result, the researchers revealed that, the more users feel euphoric over social media use (e.g., obtaining real-time information, increasing their numbers of followers, or getting comments and reposts from other users), the more likely they become depend on it. They also indicated that such results could be generated from negative emotions as well (Altuwairiqi et al., 2019).
Taken together, this research probes into the positive association between engagement and social media dependency through positive and negative emotions.
Given that little research has been devoted to understand addictive uses of Instagram features (Kircaburun & Griffiths, 2018), the current research fills the gap by
deepening the understanding of the development of social media dependency in the context of Instagram Stories. Two hypotheses are thus postulated:
H1: Engagement with Instagram Stories will positively affect Instagram Stories users’ social media dependency.
H2: The positive effect of engagement with Instagram Stories on social media dependency is mediated by positive emotions.
H3: The positive effect of engagement with Instagram Stories on social media dependency is mediated by negative emotions.
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CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY
3.1. Overview of the Research
Considering Instagram Stories is a relatively new feature on Instagram, and that Millennials spend more time on it, Millennials’ self-reported portrayals of their Instagram Stories related activities, emotions, and social media dependency were examined to address the abovementioned research questions and hypotheses. To explore the relationships between Millennial Instagram users’ motivations for using Instagram Stories and types of engagement, the influences engagement on subsequent emotional outcomes, and the mediating role of positive and negative emotions
between engagement with Instagram Stories and social media dependency, a two-stage mixed-method approach was utilized (Churchill, 1979).
Given that the U.S. headed the ranking of the countries with the most
Instagram users, especially popular among young adults (Statista, 2019d), participants of this study were U.S. Millennial adults (also known as Generation Y). They are digital natives who grew up with digital devices and information technology, and receive information fast and multitask frequently (Prensky, 2001). While Millennials are defined as those born between 1980 and 2000 (Donnison, 2007), there is no consensus on the precise definition of the term, and the range of birth years slightly differs among studies: 1981 to 1999 (Bolton et al., 2013), 1982 to 2000 (Rich, 2008), and 1982 to 2005 (Howe & Strauss, 2007). In view of that Instagram users worldwide are mainly between the ages of 18 and 34 years old (Statista, 2019c), the current study defines Millennials as those born between 1980 and 2001; therefore, participants of this study were Millennial adults between the ages of 18 and 39 in 2019. Participants were recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), a crowdsourcing platform which has been used in many social science studies due to its relatively large and diverse pool (Lee, Hon, & Won, 2018; Mason & Suri, 2012). Prior research has provided support for the quality of MTurk data, and shown that samples collected from this online panel are more representative of the U.S. population compared to other convenience sample and participant pools in the U.S. (Berinsky, Huber, & Lenz, 2012; Kees, Berry, Burton, & Sheehan, 2017).
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To generate the list of motivations that drive Millennials’ Instagram Stories usage, a pretest using a qualitative questionnaire was first conducted. Instagram Stories users were asked to provide exploratory lists of terms or phrases describing their uses and gratifications. Those descriptive items related to uses and gratifications generated from Instagram Stories users recruited from MTurk were beneficial,
because the descriptive items are in the users’ own words and carry the meanings shared by the typical users on the platform (Joinson, 2008). The list of motivations to Instagram Stories use were then obtained. The main study employed a survey to understand Millennials’ Instagram Stories use regarding their motivations,
engagement, and resulting psychological consequences. Participants’ responses to motivation-related questions were first subjected to a factor analysis and grouped into dimensions of specific uses and gratifications (Bantz, 1982); while multiple
regression analyses were used to understand the relationship between motivations for Instagram Stories usage and engagement, a mediation analysis was used to examine the relationship among engagement, resulting emotional outcomes, and social media dependency.
3.2. Pretest: Exploratory Stage
By carrying out an open-ended questionnaire on the survey website Qualtrics and recruiting participants on MTurk, the pretest aimed to obtain specific motivations for Instagram Stories use and form the U&G items related to Instagram Stories use, which would be utilized in the main study.
3.2.1. Participants
The data was collected by using the online survey tool, Qualtrics, from
September 5th to September 10th. A total of 21 participants comprising 10 females and 11 males were recruited from MTurk. The age of participants ranged from 20 to 39, with the average age of 30 years old. While 13 participants had obtained a college degree as their highest level of education, four of them had achieved a Master’s degree, two of them had completed some college, and the other two had completed high school (see Table 1).
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Table 1
Sample Demographic Characteristics (N = 21)
Demographics Frequency (N) Percentage (%)
Gender
Male 11 52.4
Female 10 47.6
Age
18–24 2 9.5
25–29 7 33.3
30–34 8 38.1
35–39 4 19.1
Educational Level
High school/ GED 2 9.5
Some college 2 9.5
2-year college degree 2 9.5
4-year college degree 11 52.4
Master’s degree, professional degree, or doctorate degree 4 19.1
3.2.2. Procedure
Participants were asked to consent to participate in the study, and then they were instructed to answer the filter questions to indicate whether they were aged between 18 and 39 and lived in the U.S. who had an Instagram account and used Instagram Stories. Subsequently, they were asked to reply to how and why they used Instagram Stories with descriptive terms or short sentences.
A questionnaire with open-ended questions adapted from Stafford, Stafford, and Schkade (2004) was utilized to form a preliminary list of narrative terms in the pretest: (1) Using three easy-to-understand terms respectively that describe what do you consume content/ participate in activities, interactions, conversations/ post
content on Instagram Stories for?; (2) What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think about what you enjoy the most when using Instagram Stories?; (3) Please use five words to describe what you enjoy when using Instagram Stories; (4) What uses of Instagram Stories are most important to you?.
Besides, participants were asked to report the frequency of their engagement with Instagram Stories on a 7-point scale (1 = never; 2 = seldom; 3 = a few times a month; 4 = once a week; 5 = a few times a week; 6 = once a day; 7 = several times per day): “In the past week, how often on average do you consume content (e.g., view, browse, check out)/ participate in activities, interactions, conversations (e.g., replying, clicking polls/question stickers)/ post content (e.g., upload, create content) on
Instagram Stories?” Next, to gain in-depth insights into the specific motivations of Instagram Stories use, participants were also asked to give examples of what their
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motivations for consuming content (e.g., viewing, browsing, checking out),
participating in activities (e.g., replying, clicking polls/ question stickers), and posting (e.g., uploading, creating content) on Instagram Stories were. Eventually, participants were asked to provide demographic information, including age, biological sex, educational levels, and numbers of followers/followings they had.
3.2.3. Results
All participants (N = 21) reported having an average of 978 followers (range from 12 to 10,000 followers) and 544 followings (ranged from 1 to 5,000 followings).
A total of 11 participants consumed content on Instagram Stories “several times per day,” while six participants participated in Instagram Stories “several times per day.”
However, only two participants indicated that they posted content on Instagram Stories “several times per day.” The majority of participants posted content on Instagram Stories “a few times a week” (see Table 2), which revealed that Instagram Stories users tend to consume content more frequently than participating or posting.
Table 2
Frequency of Using Instagram Stories (N = 21) Frequency
To form a preliminary list of motivations to be used in the main study,
responses collected from the sample were clustered and coded by identifying the ones that are related. In total, the sample revealed 416 descriptive terms. Firstly, the
collected terms with the same or similar meanings were merged and formed 48 U&G items (see Table 3).
Table 3
The List of Newly Coded 48 Items Based on the Results of the Pretest No. Items
1 To keep in touch with family and friends.
2 To have conversations with others (e.g., chats, gossip, etc.).
3 To maintain a good relationship with others (for networking).
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Secondly, the 48 items based on the result of the pretest was compared and integrated with the list derived from the U&G literature on social media use (Kaye &
Johnson, 2002; Kim, 2016; Lee et al., 2015; Papacharissi & Rubin, 2000; Sheldon &
Table 3 (cont’d)
The List of Newly Coded 48 Items Based on the Results of the Pretest No. Items
4 To meet/connect with others who have similar interests.
5 To interact with brands.
6 To browse products/services (e.g., clothes, shoes).
7 To buy products/services (e.g., clothes, shoes).
8 To relax.
9 To pass the time when bored.
10 To occupy my time.
11 To escape from reality.
12 To forget about troubles.
13 To avoid loneliness.
14 To share information about me (e.g., feelings, updates, etc.).
15 To share information I think is interesting (e.g., reposting).
16 To promote certain topics.
17 To explore.
18 To get free information without much effort.
19 To learn about new things (e.g., watching tutorials, etc.).
20 To keep up with current issues and events of the day.
21 To receive exclusive contents in real time.
22 To get updates on my family and friends.
23 To follow influencers/celebrities.
24 To see what other people share.
25 To record things that happen in my daily life.
26 To create my own portfolio (e.g., vlogging).
27 To receive responses from others.
28 To feel like I belong to a community.
29 To express my actual self (who I really am).
30 To self-promote.
31 To become popular.
32 To show off.
33 Because it is easy to use.
34 Because it is entertaining.
35 Because it is enjoyable.
36 Because it is fun.
37 Because it is cool.
38 Because it is casual.
39 Because it is functional.
40 Because it is convenient.
41 Because it is real.
42 Because it is private.
43 Because it is new.
44 Because it disappears after 24 hours.
45 Because I enjoy editing stories with the features (e.g., filters, texts, emojis).
46 Because I can receive some benefits (e.g., giveaways, coupons).
47 Because I have nothing better to do.
48 Because people around me use Instagram Stories.
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Bryant, 2016) that includes themes such as social interaction, entertainment, passing time, information sharing, information seeking, surveillance, archiving, need for recognition, coolness, and creativity (see Table 4).
Table 4
The List of Motivations Derived from the U&G Literature
Motivations Items References
Social interaction To interact with a number of people.
To maintain a good relationship with others (for networking).
To get updates on close friends and family.
To keep in touch with friends far away.
To communicate with friends and family.
Because people around me use Instagram.
To know about things that are happening around me.
To connect/meet with people who share similar interest.
Lee et al. (2015)
Entertainment Because it is entertaining.
Because it is enjoyable.
To escape from reality To forget about troubles To avoid loneliness
To get what I want without much effort To relax
Papacharissi & Rubin (2000); Lee et al. (2015)
Passing Time Because it passes time when bored.
When I have nothing better to do.
To occupy my time.
Papacharissi & Rubin (2000)
Information Sharing To provide my update.
To be noticed by others.
To express my actual self (who I really am).
To share my personal information with others.
To show off.
Lee et al. (2015)
Information seeking New way to do research.
It is easier.
To get information for free.
To look for information.
To see what is out there.
To keep up with main issues of the day.
Papacharissi & Rubin (2000); Kaye & Johnson (2002)
Surveillance To interact with my friends.
To see “visual status updates” of my friends.
It is fun.
To follow my friends.
To see what other people share.
To “like” my followers’ photos.
To creep through other people’s posts.
Sheldon & Bryant (2016)
Archiving To record daily events through photos.
To create my personal space.
To record my traces (e.g., trip) via photomap.
To do personal blogging.
To take fancy photos and save them online.
To update photos and videos with various filters
Lee et al. (2015)
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applied.
Need for recognition To get recognition from other users.
Need for recognition To get recognition from other users.