“Why Are You Running Away From Social Media?” Analysis of the Factors Influencing Social Media Fatigue: An Empirical Data Study Based on Chinese Youth

Abstract

In the digital era, social media is increasingly permeating the fragmented lives of people. While enjoying the convenience and speed of online socializing, people are gradually surrounded by a variety of information. Through observations and interviews, we found that young people are plagued by negative comparisons, interaction dysfunction, information overload, social overload, and intergenerational communication in the process of participating in social media. Increasing numbers of young people feel overwhelmed in the process of online socialization and the phenomenon of social media fatigue (SMF) gradually spreads. This study combined the existing relevant theoretical models of the influencing factors of SMF and the real-life empirical materials of youth groups. Furthermore, this study enriched into new research variables and validated the data of relevant variables through a questionnaire survey (n = 663) to explore the influencing factors of SMF of youth groups and inductively analyze the inner logic of the emergence of SMF among such groups. It was found that negative comparison, interaction dysregulation, information overload, social overload, self-efficacy, and impression management all had significant positive effects on SMF behaviors, while privacy anxiety and intergenerational communication had no significant positive effects on SMF behaviors.

Impact of social media use on critical thinking ability of university students

“…Such a phenomenon is known as social media burnout (Bright et al, 2015). A survey on Chinese youth groups found that information overload and social overload have a significantly positive impact on social media burnout (Liu and He, 2021). Social media burnout is a consequence of multi-dimensional user experience due to the overuse of social media, and it includes fatigue, annoyance, anger, disappointment, caution, loss of interest, decreased needs, and decreased motivation (Ravindran et al, 2013).…”

Silence in Social Media: A Multilevel Analysis of the Network Structure Effects on Participation Disparity in Facebook

“…Third, not all lurking behaviors stem from the same reason—there may be various psychological motivations underlying, including social comparisons (Burnell et al, 2019), anxiety and loneliness (O’Day & Heimberg, 2021), social media fatigue (Liu & He, 2021), fear of isolation and perceived affordances (Fox & Holt, 2018), and privacy concerns (Osatuyi, 2015), among many others. Different motives may lead to different patterns of silence—for instance, anxiety or social comparisons are associated with temporary and repeated silence, whereas social media fatigue or privacy concerns can lead to long-term silence.…”

Drawbacks of College Students’ Problematic Use of Social Media: Investigating Passive Impacts of FoMO in the Context of University Education

“…Since RED social media is used more by women, 80% of the data are female, and 20% are male. The questionnaire participants we focused on were all college students because previous studies have shown that social media has a more significant impact on young people than others [30]. Moreover, some reports show that college students have become the primary audience of mobile media due to their active thinking and strong ability to accept new things [35].…”