Habits and the electronic herd: The psychology behind social media’s successes and failures

Abstract

If platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are the engines of social media use, what is the gasoline? The answer can be found in the psychological dynamics behind consumer habit formation and performance. In fact, the financial success of different social media sites is closely tied to the daily‐use habits they create among users. We explain how the rewards of social media sites motivate user habit formation, how social media design provides cues that automatically activate habits and nudge continued use, and how strong habits hinder quitting social media. Demonstrating that use habits are tied to cues, we report a novel test of a 2008 change in Facebook design, showing that it impeded posting only of frequent, habitual users, suggesting that the change disrupted habit automaticity. Finally, we offer predictions about the future of social media sites, highlighting the features most likely to promote user habits.

Studying problems, not problematic usage: Do mobile checking habits increase procrastination and decrease well-being?

“…Future research should combine user-centered self-reports with technology-centered logging data (e.g., Aalbers et al, 2021), which would reduce the threat of common method bias present in this study. While this study’s habit measure (SRBAI) is well-established (Bayer & LaRose, 2018; Gardner et al, 2012; Wood & Rünger, 2016), future research could leverage implicit response-frequency measures of habit strength (Naab & Schnauber, 2016) or use experimental designs that, for instance, vary the amount of social or technical cues (Anderson & Wood, 2021; Bayer, Campbell et al, 2016).…”

“…For instance, experience sampling studies could combine descriptive screen time measures (i.e., behavioral frequency) and frequency-independent automaticity measures at multiple levels of mobile social media use (e.g., for various devices, applications, and features; Meier & Reinecke, 2020). This would allow assessments of their relative impact on well-being: it may help identify which device-, application-, or feature-specific habits (Anderson & Wood, 2021) and usage contexts pose the biggest challenges to maintain a healthy balance between connection and disconnection (Vanden Abeele, 2020). Such designs could be combined with experimental tests of digital well-being interventions (e.g., apps), which represent increasingly popular but largely untested “tech solutions to tech problems” (Bayer & LaRose, 2018, p. 122).…”

“…The technology habit approach has several perks that make it particularly well suited to the study of digital well-being (Anderson & Wood, 2021;Bayer & LaRose, 2018). First, it offers a single focal concept (i.e., habits) that can be and has been applied to a wide range of media and communication technologies (Bayer & LaRose, 2018) at all main levels of analysis (i.e., devices, applications, features, interactions, and messages; Meier & Reinecke, 2020).…”

“…The present study proposes that such an approach already exists in the concept of technology habits (Anderson & Wood, 2021; Bayer, Campbell et al, 2016; Bayer & LaRose, 2018; Schnauber-Stockmann et al, 2018; Tokunaga, 2016). Habits refer to a “memory representation of [a] habitual response” (Wood & Rünger, 2016, p. 291).…”

Dynamics of adolescents’ smartphone use and well-being are positive but ephemeral

“…The cues provided by social networking applications through sophisticated algorithms, which determine the receipt of notifications and page layout, as well as individual (e.g., mood) and contextual (e.g., commuting time) factors, facilitate a habitual use of the smartphone. Repeatedly used applications like social media and instant messaging platforms 65 foster the experience of short-term gratifications from incoming notifications, messages, and Likes, to the point that motivations for smartphone use are substituted by habitual use 70 . In fact, according to a recent scoping review on neuroscientific studies, online activities produce strong rewards for the brain, thus fostering subsequent use to seek short-term gratifications 71 .…”