Social media has irrevocably altered the way we communicate. While the ease of connecting over social media can be an advantage, many people experience ‘social media fatigue’ where they are overwhelmed by the constant stream of content and contact. A study published in Computers in Human Behavior explores the factors that contribute to social media fatigue.
Using social media has become increasingly prevalent over the last decade. In some ways, it is beneficial to many peoples’ lives as they form and maintain friendships, keep up with distant family, and engage with content that feels personally relevant to them. On the other hand, social media can be toxic, leading to addiction, cyberbullying, and privacy invasions. Fatigue with social media, much like fatigue in other arenas, can be caused by overuse.
This study sought to understand the factors that can make a person more or less likely to experience social media fatigue.
Nan Sheng and colleagues utilized data from 2012 participants who were recruited through a survey company in China. Participants ranged in age from 12 to 72 years old and had an almost even gender split. Participants completed measured on information overload, system features overload, privacy invasion, cyberbullying, emotional exhaustion, social media fatigue, amount of time spent on social media, and sociodemographic information.
Results showed that the information overload that participants were taking in from social media was leading them to become increasingly emotionally exhausted. Additionally, technological factors occurring on social media platforms, such as software updates or too many distinct features to keep up with, can expedite the process of exhaustion and make users feel like they are receiving more information than they can consume. Social overload can occur as well, where users feel they are receiving too much engagement to keep up with.
Another significant factor associated with social media fatigue is concerns about privacy and cyberbullying. These concerns can lead to emotional exhaustion, which is a big factor in social media fatigue. Overload and unfavorable experiences both had indirect effects on social media fatigue through the variable of emotional exhaustion, which supports previous research on this topic.
This study adds to the increasing body of knowledge on the very relevant modern topic of social media usage. Despite the advantages, there are limitations to note. One such limitation is that the study utilized a one-time self-report survey, which could be vulnerable to inattention, desirability bias, and could miss effects that could be captured by longitudinal research.
Additionally, this study did not take into account that social media is used for more than just fun nowadays; many people use it for their jobs, and this could contribute to reasons for emotional exhaustion related to social media use. Lastly, this article does not specify which social media platforms individuals are using, which could have significant effects on results.
“While social media has a number of pros, such as increased access to information and ease of contact, it also has certain cons, resulting in emotional exhaustion and social media fatigue,” the researchers concluded. “Similar to recent studies that have begun to focus on the potential negative consequences of social media use, this study identified social-media-related factors (i.e., information overload and system features overload) and user-related factors (i.e., privacy invasion and cyberbullying) as critical antecedents of social media fatigue, wherein the impacts of these antecedents were mediated by emotional exhaustion.”
The study, “Too much overload and concerns: Antecedents of social media fatigue and the mediating role of emotional exhaustion“, was authored by Nan Sheng, Chunjiang Yang, Lei Han, and Min Jou.