Social media sensitivity : probing heterogeneity across people, places, platforms, types of use and time
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Recent research suggests that the relationship between social media use and wellbeing is heterogeneous and multifaceted. This dissertation examines five potential sources of this heterogeneity: user's psychological dispositions (e.g., tendency for psychological vulnerability), the physical and social context of use (e.g., where and around whom use is occurring), the platform that is being used (e.g., Instagram, YouTube), the type of use that is occurring (e.g., passive active) and time domains (e.g., hours, weeks and months). I deploy random-slope multilevel models to analyze two large corpuses of experience sampling data collected from young adults (N=3,233; Observations= 219,027). Results reveal small but persistent associations between social media use and wellbeing outcomes that are moderated by a range of variables. Psychologically vulnerable people tend to feel worse after using social media as compared to psychologically healthy people. Using social media in social locations and around others is associated with negative wellbeing outcomes, but these results differ across platforms. Both passive and active social media use is associated with increased wellbeing outcomes at the within-person level but decreased wellbeing outcomes at the between-person level. Lastly, some evidence suggests that social media's effects on wellbeing accumulate steadily over time instead of "drenching" users in the moments after use has occurred. Theoretically, my dissertation provides empirical support for three key theories -- Digital Wellbeing as a Dynamic Construct, Differential Susceptibility to Media Effects Model and The Complementarity-Interference Framework. More broadly, results from dissertation suggest that blanket legislation on social media companies might be less effective than promoting tools that bolsters' users agency over their social media use.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2023; ©2023 |
| Publication date | 2023; 2023 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Vaid, Sumer |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Harari, Gabriella |
| Thesis advisor | Harari, Gabriella |
| Thesis advisor | Hancock, Jeff |
| Thesis advisor | Matz, Sandra C |
| Thesis advisor | Ram, Nilam |
| Thesis advisor | Reeves, Byron, 1949- |
| Degree committee member | Hancock, Jeff |
| Degree committee member | Matz, Sandra C |
| Degree committee member | Ram, Nilam |
| Degree committee member | Reeves, Byron, 1949- |
| Associated with | Stanford University, School of Humanities and Sciences |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Communication |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Sumer Vaid. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Communication. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2023. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/ww598pg2211 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2023 by Sumer Vaid
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC-ND).
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