Aspects of social media use and wellbeing

Use of social media has quickly become part of everyday life, particularly for those who grew up in this age of technology. Although some research has examined social media use and its relationship to wellbeing, many studies have not accounted for the multifaceted nature of social media nor controlled potentially confounding variables. The current study focused on the relations of the intensity and purposes of social media use with sense of belonging and psychological wellbeing. The primary hypotheses addressed whether the intensity and purposes of social media use are associated with: (a) sense of belonging, and (b) psychological wellbeing. Participants were 298 undergraduate students. They completed an online questionnaire measuring intensity and purposes of social media use with the Gravitation Toward Facebook Scale (GoToFB) and the Multidimensional Facebook Intensity Scale (MFIS). The questionnaire also contained the Sense of Belonging Instrument – Psychological State (SOBI-P) and Ryff’s Psychological Wellbeing Scale. In addition, a brief researcher-developed measure of face-to-face interaction was included to investigate the relationship between face-to-face interaction and intensity and purposes of social media use. The results largely did not support the hypotheses that the intensity and purposes of social media use would be associated with sense of belonging and psychological wellbeing. Multiple regression analyses revealed Expression (t = -2.13, p = .034) and Learning (t = 1.97, p = .049) of the GoToFB scale made significant, unique contributions to psychological wellbeing when gender, social desirability, self-esteem, and the Big 5 personality traits were controlled, but not when sense of belonging was also controlled (both ps = .11). Sense of belonging accounted for significant variance in psychological wellbeing, even controlling for all other variables. Regarding bivariate relationships: the Learning subscale of the GoToFB scale was positively correlated with psychological wellbeing. Additionally, the Monitoring subscale of GoToFB and the Persistence and Overuse subscales of the MFIS were negatively correlated with both sense of belonging and psychological wellbeing. Finally, significant relationships were found between different purposes or intensity of social media use and personality traits and face-to-face interaction. Implications for school and clinical psychology are discussed, along with recommendations for future research.Psy.D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Albert Sulta