Effects of Social Media on Anxiety/Behavior

Effects of Social Media on Anxiety/Behavior

Introduction

In the present study, we operationalized entertainment based on past studies (i.e., combating boredom, passing the time, and relaxing) which focused on social media's capability of helping users escape from daily routine. In retrospect a broader conceptualization of entertainment, including escapism, mood management, achievement, and competition (Vorderer, Klimmt, & Ritterfeld, 2004), perhaps may be more appropriate in the context of news sharing in social media and may yield different results. Finally, we did not differentiate the impact of different types of news in our study such as politics, science, entertainment and sports. Individuals have different preferences for news types and this could influence their sharing behavior (Mitchelstein & Boczkowski, 2010). Future work can therefore consider the characteristics of news as well as different types of social media platforms. Different resources afforded by the technologies may influence perceptions and ultimately the usage intention (Lee, 2010). Integrating these factors may contribute to a better understanding of the motivations underlying users' news sharing behavior in social media.

Sample

A survey instrument was developed and administered to undergraduate and graduate students at a large local university. Participation was voluntary and anonymous. A total of 210 questionnaires were collected, of which seven respondents reported that they had no experience in using social media to access news. These were omitted from the sample, resulting in a final sample size of 203 respondents. This means that all the respondents had prior experience with using social media to access news stories. The respondents were also asked to indicate one social media platform in which they primarily used to access news stories, and they were required to answer the survey questions related to gratifications, social media experiences and usage intention based on this selected platform. Such an operationalization helped us to obtain a more accurate and realistic measure of social media usage intention and gratifications based on the respondents' actual experiences. The demographics of the sample are shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Demographics of respondents (N = 203).

n

%

Gender

Male

95

46.8

Female

108

53.2

Level of study

Undergraduate

141

69.5

Graduate

62

30.5

Selected social media platform

Facebook

117

57.6

Twitter

21

10.3

Renren

12

5.9

YouTube

4

2.0

Others

49

24.2

Age

Median = 26

Mean = 27

Measures

All constructs were measured using multiple items, each measured using a 5-point Likert-type scale. The measurements assessing gratifications of information seeking, socializing, entertainment and status seeking for news sharing in social media were adapted from prior U&G research (Lee et al., 2010 and Park et al., 2009). Prior social media sharing experience was adapted from LaRose and Eastin (2004) while intention to share news was adapted from Lee et al., 2010 and Hagger et al., 2007. Table 2 lists the items used to measure each construct.

Table 2. Measurement constructs.

Variable

Description

Item

Factor loading

Mean

Std. deviation

a

Information seeking

Measures the extent to which news shared in social media can provide users with relevant and timely information

It helps me to store useful information

.89

3.01

1.09

.86

It is easy to retrieve information when I need

.91

3.09

1.15

To keep up to date on the latest news and events

.69

3.37

1.04

Socializing

Measures the extent to which news sharing helps to develop and maintain relationships with acquaintances in social media

I can interact with people when sharing news

.85

3.45

1.06

.87

To keep in touch with ...