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Mindfulness buffers the negative effects of social media overuse on work effort through state self-control during crisis: a daily diary study
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In this study, we examine how leaders' emotional labour strategies (surface acting and deep acting) deplete leaders' self-control resources to predict abusive supervision, in addition to the moderating role of leader mindfulness. Integrating ego-depletion theory and emotion regulation theory, we hypothesise that deep acting and surface acting predict higher levels of abusive supervision, which is mediated by reduced self-control. Furthermore, we predict that leaders' trait mindfulness moderates the relationship between emotional labour and self-control on abusive supervision. Results from a three-wave study of leader-follower dyads supported mediation hypotheses; both deep and surface acting predicted abusive supervision, which is mediated by reduced self-control. Our moderated mediation hypotheses were supported for deep acting but not surface acting. This research contributes to the literature by demonstrating the depleting nature of emotional labour in leadership and the importance of leader mindfulness as a boundary condition that can make deep acting less harmful for leader behaviour.
Unhealthy snacking is considered one of the main contributors to the current obesity pandemic. Initial research suggests that work-related stress may be an important predictor of unhealthy snacking, however, there is still much to learn about the underlying mechanisms and conditions of work-related snacking. To address this research gap, we investigated the effect of two prominent work stressors, workload and interpersonal conflict, on unhealthy snacking behaviors during work and in the evening after work. We propose that these effects may be explained through a homeostatic motive to restore energy following depletion and a hedonic motive to induce pleasure, thus investigating the potential mediating effect of emotional exhaustion and negative affect. Additionally, since individual differences play an important role for snacking behaviors, we examined the potential moderating effect of trait mindfulness. Results from diary data across two workweeks (N = 118) did not show a significant positive linear relationship between daily work stressors and unhealthy snacking. The protective nature of trait mindfulness became apparent in the relationship between after-work emotional exhaustion and unhealthy snacking, indicating that individuals high in trait mindfulness consume less unhealthy snacks in the evening after work when emotionally exhausted. Furthermore, a supplementary analysis revealed that employees especially snack in the evening after low workload days. Taken together, our results unfold the complex nature of work-related snacking and offer valuable input for practical implementations.
Social media has become a familiar reality in many institutions and organizations, as it is considered one of the most important means of personal and organizational communication. Despite this, there are many challenges that organizations face when using social media among employees, for example: disrupting their productivity. This study aimed to identify the types of social media that are used by employees during their work and to know the extent of their impact on their productivity. A systematic literature review approach was followed. By reviewing and analyzing 37 articles and studies, the study concluded that social media, which can be categorized into social network, messages, email, forums, blogs, Wikis and many more, has become a common communication method for employees to exchange knowledge and collaborate among colleagues in the organization. By presenting and analyzing the previous literature related to the subject of the study, most of the primary studies demonstrated that the use of social media is beneficial to organizational and personal productivity. However, some studies have shown negative effects of social media use in the workplace. Most studies are not able to explain the actual causality of the employment factor that actually affects employee productivity in the workplace because they present their findings based on cross-sectional data. Therefore, this review can contribute to enriching the literature and serve as a basis for future studies concerned with determining the causality of the use of social media on employee productivity. Accordingly, this review proposed the intervention model for Internet addiction as a tool through which the causality of the use factor that contributes to the adverse effects of the organization's productivity and intervention can be addressed.
Young people may be particularly vulnerable to the mental health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and may also be more likely to use social media at this time. This study aimed to explore young people’s mental health and social media use during the COVID-19 pandemic and examined their use of social media to seek and provide support for suicidal thoughts and self-harm during this period. Young people aged 16–25 (n = 371, M = 21.1) from the general population in Australia completed an anonymous, cross-sectional online survey advertised on social media from June to October 2020. Participants reported high levels of psychological distress, with over 40% reporting severe levels of anxiety and depression, and those with a mental health diagnosis were more likely to perceive the pandemic to have had a negative impact on their mental health. Gender-diverse participants appeared the most negatively impacted. Social media use was high, with 96% reporting use at least once a day, and two-thirds reporting an increase in social media use since the start of the pandemic. One-third had used social media to seek support for suicidal thoughts or self-harm, and half had used it to support another person. This study adds to a growing literature suggesting social media can provide an opportunity to support young people experiencing psychological distress and suicide risk. Uniquely, this study points to the utility of using social media for this purpose during high-risk periods such as pandemics, where access to face-to-face support may be limited. To promote the quality and safety of support provided on social media, resources for help-seekers and help-givers should be developed and disseminated. Social media companies must consider the vulnerability of some users during pandemics and do what they can to promote wellbeing and safety.
Purpose of Review
During the COVID-19 pandemic, both social media use and rates of anxiety and depression among college students have increased significantly. This begs the question, what is the relationship between social media use and college student mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic?
Recent Findings
Prior studies have found mixed results regarding the relationship between social media use and college student mental health. This relationship has become increasingly complex during the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that excessive or problematic social media use during the COVID-19 pandemic was correlated with worse mental health outcomes that could be mitigated by dialectical thinking, optimism, mindfulness, and cognitive reappraisal.
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic acts as a moderator by strengthening the relationship between social media use and mental health. Future studies should consider the impact of social media on college student mental health and concentrate on intervention initiatives to ensure the psychological well-being of college students during a global pandemic outbreak.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic has led to a significant increase in the consumption of the internet for work, leisure time activities, and has also generated substantial amounts of anxiety, and uncertainty, which has lead individuals to spend a lot of time surfing the internet for the latest news on developments in the COVID‐19 crisis. This ends up as scrolling or surfing through a lot of pessimistic news items. This search for information during COVID‐19 is apparently influenced by a number of cognitive biases as well as mediated by poor affect regulation skills. Thus, there is a need to address these cognitive biases and promote affect regulation strategies across health settings.
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, social media has rapidly become a crucial communication tool for information generation, dissemination, and consumption. In this scoping review, we selected and examined peer-reviewed empirical studies relating to COVID-19 and social media during the first outbreak from November, 2019, to November, 2020. From an analysis of 81 studies, we identified five overarching public health themes concerning the role of online social media platforms and COVID-19. These themes focused on: surveying public attitudes, identifying infodemics, assessing mental health, detecting or predicting COVID-19 cases, analysing government responses to the pandemic, and evaluating quality of health information in prevention education videos. Furthermore, our Review emphasises the paucity of studies on the application of machine learning on data from COVID-19-related social media and a scarcity of studies documenting real-time surveillance that was developed with data from social media on COVID-19. For COVID-19, social media can have a crucial role in disseminating health information and tackling infodemics and misinformation.
Social media plays a significant role in modern life, but excessive use of it during the COVID-19 pandemic has become a source of concern. Supported by the conservation of resources theory, the current study extends the literature on problematic social media usage during COVID-19 by investigating its association with emotional and mental health outcomes. In a moderated mediation model, this study proposes that problematic social media use by workers during COVID-19 is linked to fear of COVID-19, which is further associated with depression. The current study tested trait mindfulness as an important personal resource that may be associated with reduced fear of COVID-19 despite problematic social media use. The study collected temporally separate data to avoid common method bias. Pakistani employees (N = 267) working in different organizations completed a series of survey questionnaires. The results supported the moderated mediation model, showing that problematic social media use during the current pandemic is linked to fear of COVID-19 and depression among employees. Furthermore, trait mindfulness was found to be an important buffer, reducing the negative indirect association between problematic social media use and depression through fear of COVID-19. These results offer implications for practitioners. The limitations of this study and future research directions are also discussed.
Background
Considerable research has been devoted to examining the mental health conditions of patients with COVID-19 and medical staff attending to these patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there are few insights concerning how the pandemic may take a toll on the mental health of the general population, and especially of nonpatients (ie, individuals who have not contracted COVID-19).
Objective
This study aimed to investigate the association between social media use and mental health conditions in the general population based on a national representative sample during the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak in China.
Methods
We formed a national representative sample (N=2185) comprising participants from 30 provinces across China, who were the first to experience the COVID-19 outbreak in the world. We administered a web-based survey to these participants to analyze social media use, health information support received via social media, and possible psychiatric disorders, including secondary traumatic stress (STS) and vicarious trauma (VT).
Results
Social media use did not cause mental health issues, but it mediated the levels of traumatic emotions among nonpatients. Participants received health information support via social media, but excessive social media use led to elevated levels of stress (β=.175; P<.001), anxiety (β=.224; P<.001), depression (β=.201; P<.001), STS (β=.307; P<.001), and VT (β=.688; P<.001). Geographic location (or geolocation) and lockdown conditions also contributed to more instances of traumatic disorders. Participants living in big cities were more stressed than those living in rural areas (P=.02). Furthermore, participants from small cities or towns were more anxious (P=.01), stressed (P<.001), and depressed (P=.008) than those from rural areas. Obtaining more informational support (β=.165; P<.001) and emotional support (β=.144; P<.001) via social media increased their VT levels. Peer support received via social media increased both VT (β=.332; P<.001) and STS (β=.130; P<.001) levels. Moreover, geolocation moderated the relationships between emotional support on social media and VT (F2=3.549; P=.029) and the association between peer support and STS (F2=5.059; P=.006). Geolocation also interacted with health information support in predicting STS (F2=5.093; P=.006).
Conclusions
COVID-19 has taken a severe toll on the mental health of the general population, including individuals who have no history of psychiatric disorders or coronavirus infection. This study contributes to the literature by establishing the association between social media use and psychiatric disorders among the general public during the COVID-19 outbreak. The study findings suggest that the causes of such psychiatric disorders are complex and multifactorial, and social media use is a potential factor. The findings also highlight the experiences of people in China and can help global citizens and health policymakers to mitigate the effects of psychiatric disorders during this and other public health crises, which should be regarded as a key component of a global pandemic response.
Following the death of George Floyd, Facebook posts about the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM) surged, creating the opportunity to examine reactions by race and sex. This study employed a two-part mixed methods approach beginning with an analysis of posts from a single college student’s Facebook newsfeed over a 12-week period, commencing on the date of George Floyd’s death (25 May 2020). A triangulation protocol enhanced exploratory observational–archival Facebook posts with qualitative data from 24 Black and White college students queried about their views of BLM and policing. The Facebook data revealed that White males, who were the least active in posting about BLM, were most likely to criticize BLM protests. They also believed incidents of police brutality were exceptions that tainted an otherwise commendable profession. In contrast, Black individuals commonly saw the case of George Floyd as consistent with a longstanding pattern of injustice that takes an emotional toll, and as an egregious exemplification of racism that calls for indictment of the status quo. The exploratory data in this article also illustrate how even for a cause célèbre, attention on Facebook ebbs over time. This phenomenon obscures the urgency of effecting change, especially for persons whose understanding of racism is influenced by its coverage on social media. The need to recognize the divergence of views—how they vary by sex and race and their connection to social media—remains critical for progress in determining the best steps forward in race relations and police reform.
The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) prompted people to face a distressing and unexpected situation. Uncertainty and social distancing changed people's behaviors, impacting on their feelings, daily habits, and social relationships, which are core elements in human well-being. In particular, restrictions due to the quarantine increased feelings of loneliness and anxiety. Within this context, the use of digital technologies has been recommended to relieve stress and anxiety and to decrease loneliness, even though the overall effects of social media consumption during pandemics still need to be carefully addressed. In this regard, social media use evidence risk and opportunities. In fact, according to a compensatory model of Internet-related activities, the online environment may be used to alleviate negative feelings caused by distressing life circumstances, despite potentially leading to negative outcomes. The present study examined whether individuals who were experiencing high levels of loneliness during the forced isolation for COVID-19 pandemic were more prone to feel anxious, and whether their sense of loneliness prompted excessive social media use. Moreover, the potentially mediating effect of excessive social media use in the relationship between perceived loneliness and anxiety was tested. A sample of 715 adults (71.5% women) aged between 18 and 72 years old took part in an online survey during the period of lockdown in Italy. The survey included self-report measures to assess perceived sense of loneliness, excessive use of social media, and anxiety. Participants reported that they spent more hours/day on social media during the pandemic than before the pandemic. We found evidence that perceived feelings of loneliness predicted both excessive social media use and anxiety, with excessive social media use also increasing anxiety levels. These findings suggest that isolation probably reinforced the individuals' sense of loneliness, strengthening the need to be part of virtual communities. However, the facilitated and prolonged access to social media during the COVID-19 pandemic risked to further increase anxiety, generating a vicious cycle that in some cases may require clinical attention.
Background:
Informed by the differential susceptibility to media effects model (DSMM), the current study aims to investigate associations of COVID-19-related social media use with mental health outcomes and to uncover potential mechanisms underlying the links.
Methods:
A sample of 512 (62.5% women; Mage = 22.12 years, SD = 2.47) Chinese college students participated in this study from 24 March to 1 April 2020 via online questionnaire. They completed measures of social media use, the COVID-19 stressor, negative affect, secondary traumatic stress (STS), depression, and anxiety as well as covariates.
Results:
As expected, results from regression analyses indicated that a higher level of social media use was associated with worse mental health. More exposure to disaster news via social media was associated with greater depression for participants with high (but not low) levels of the disaster stressor. Moreover, path analysis showed negative affect mediated the relationship of social media use and mental health.
Conclusions:
These findings suggest that the disaster stressor may be a risk factor that amplifies the deleterious impact of social media use on depression. In addition, excessive exposure to disaster on social media may trigger negative affect, which may in turn contribute to mental health problems. Future interventions to improve mental health should consider elements of both disaster stressor and negative affect.
Incivility at work poses a problem, both for individuals who are the targets of incivility and for organizations. However, relatively little is known about what drives or hinders individuals to engage in incivility, and how they respond to their own uncivil behavior. Adopting a self-regulation perspective, we link theories explaining enacted incivility as self-regulatory failure with research about the self-regulatory benefits of mindfulness. We develop and investigate a conceptual model on the role of trait mindfulness in antecedent- and consequent-based processes of enacted workplace incivility. Data from an experience-sampling study across 5 work days provided support for the majority of our hypotheses. Individuals high in trait mindfulness not only showed generally low levels of enacted incivility, but they also displayed less variability in enacted incivility over time. Specifically, while enacted incivility was entrained to the work week and systematically decreased from Monday to Friday for individuals low in mindfulness, enacted incivility remained stable over the course of the work week for individuals high in mindfulness. Furthermore, employees high in trait mindfulness reacted in a more morally mature manner and experienced guilt when having engaged in uncivil behavior compared to their low mindful counterparts. However, increases in guilt for high mindful individuals did not translate into lower levels of enacted incivility the following work day. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
Research shows greater mindfulness is associated with less negative affect and more positive affect. Fewer studies have examined the mediating psychological processes linking mindfulness to these outcomes in adolescents. This three-wave, prospective longitudinal study examines rumination—the tendency to engage in repetitive and negative self-focused thinking—as one potential explanatory process. High school students (N = 599, Mage = 16.3 years; 49% girls) completed a short-form version of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire, in addition to self-report measures of rumination and negative and positive affect three times over the course of a school year. Autoregressive, cross-lagged panel models tested reciprocal, prospective associations between mindfulness, rumination, and negative and positive affect, while accounting for prior levels of each construct, within-wave covariances, and gender and grade level. The results showed that the nonjudgment mindfulness facet (and the total mindfulness score) predicted cross-wave reductions in rumination, that in turn predicted cross-wave reductions in negative affect. No evidence for mediation was found for positive affect, or for any of the other mindfulness facets (describe, acting with awareness, and nonreactivity). This study provides suggestive evidence that individual differences in mindfulness, and in particular nonjudgmental acceptance, prospectively predict less negative affect through lower rumination.
Background:
In the first few months of 2020, information and news reports about the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) were rapidly published and shared on social media and social networking sites. While the field of infodemiology has studied information patterns on the Web and in social media for at least 18 years, the COVID-19 pandemic has been referred to as the first social media infodemic. However, there is limited evidence about whether and how the social media infodemic has spread panic and affected the mental health of social media users.
Objective:
The aim of this study is to determine how social media affects self-reported mental health and the spread of panic about COVID-19 in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
Methods:
To carry out this study, an online questionnaire was prepared and conducted in Iraqi Kurdistan, and a total of 516 social media users were sampled. This study deployed a content analysis method for data analysis. Correspondingly, data were analyzed using SPSS software.
Results:
Participants reported that social media has a significant impact on spreading fear and panic related to the COVID-19 outbreak in Iraqi Kurdistan, with a potential negative influence on people's mental health and psychological well-being. Facebook was the most used social media network for spreading panic about the COVID-19 outbreak in Iraq. We found a significant positive statistical correlation between self-reported social media use and the spread of panic related to COVID-19 (R=.8701). Our results showed that the majority of youths aged 18-35 years are facing psychological anxiety.
Conclusions:
During lockdown, people are using social media platforms to gain information about COVID-19. The nature of the impact of social media panic among people varies depending on an individual's gender, age, and level of education. Social media has played a key role in spreading anxiety about the COVID-19 outbreak in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Huge citizens expose to social media during a novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbroke in Wuhan, China. We assess the prevalence of mental health problems and examine their association with social media exposure. A cross-sectional study among Chinese citizens aged≥18 years old was conducted during Jan 31 to Feb 2, 2020. Online survey was used to do rapid assessment. Total of 4872 participants from 31 provinces and autonomous regions were involved in the current study. Besides demographics and social media exposure (SME), depression was assessed by The Chinese version of WHO-Five Well-Being Index (WHO-5) and anxiety was assessed by Chinese version of generalized anxiety disorder scale (GAD-7). multivariable logistic regressions were used to identify associations between social media exposure with mental health problems after controlling for covariates. The prevalence of depression, anxiety and combination of depression and anxiety (CDA) was 48.3% (95%CI: 46.9%-49.7%), 22.6% (95%CI: 21.4%-23.8%) and 19.4% (95%CI: 18.3%-20.6%) during COVID-19 outbroke in Wuhan, China. More than 80% (95%CI:80.9%-83.1%) of participants reported frequently exposed to social media. After controlling for covariates, frequently SME was positively associated with high odds of anxiety (OR = 1.72, 95%CI: 1.31–2.26) and CDA (OR = 1.91, 95%CI: 1.52–2.41) compared with less SME. Our findings show there are high prevalence of mental health problems, which positively associated with frequently SME during the COVID-19 outbreak. These findings implicated the government need pay more attention to mental health problems, especially depression and anxiety among general population and combating with “infodemic” while combating during public health emergency.
The World Health Organization has not only signaled the health risks of COVID-19, but also labeled the situation as infodemic, due to the amount of information, true and false, circulating around this topic. Research shows that, in social media, falsehood is shared far more than evidence-based information. However, there is less research analyzing the circulation of false and evidence-based information during health emergencies. Thus, the present study aims at shedding new light on the type of tweets that circulated on Twitter around the COVID-19 outbreak for two days, in order to analyze how false and true information was shared. To that end, 1000 tweets have been analyzed. Results show that false information is tweeted more but retweeted less than science-based evidence or fact-checking tweets, while science-based evidence and fact-checking tweets capture more engagement than mere facts. These findings bring relevant insights to inform public health policies.
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has disrupted virtually every aspect of daily living, engendering forced isolation and social distance, economic hardship, fears of contracting a potentially lethal illness and feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. Unfortunately, there is no formula or operating manual for how to cope with the current global pandemic. previous research has documented an array of responses to mass crises or disasters, including chronic anxiety and posttraumatic stress as well as resilience and recovery. much can be learned from this research about how people have coped in the past in order to identify strategies that may be particularly effective in managing distress and cultivating resilience during these perilous times. we delineate multiple coping strategies (e.g., behavioral activation, acceptance-based coping, mindfulness practice, loving-kindness practices) geared to decrease stress and promote resilience and recovery. These strategies may be especially effective because they help individuals make meaning, build distress tolerance, increase social support, foster a view of our deep human interconnectedness, and take goal-directed value-driven actions in midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
We address the diffusion of information about the COVID-19 with a massive data analysis on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit and Gab. We analyze engagement and interest in the COVID-19 topic and provide a differential assessment on the evolution of the discourse on a global scale for each platform and their users. We fit information spreading with epidemic models characterizing the basic reproduction number R 0 for each social media platform. Moreover, we identify information spreading from questionable sources, finding different volumes of misinformation in each platform. However, information from both reliable and questionable sources do not present different spreading patterns. Finally, we provide platform-dependent numerical estimates of rumors’ amplification.
Objectives
Many people spend a lot of time on social media every day, but they may sometimes feel left out on these platforms (e.g., getting few likes or comments on their status updates). Researchers have shown that such experience often leads to psychological and behavioral maladjustment. However, relatively little is known about whether individual characteristics such as trait mindfulness may buffer these negative effects. In the current study, we tested the hypothesis that trait mindfulness weakens the effects of feeling left out on social media on different maladjustment outcomes.
Methods
In this study, participants first completed a well-validated measure to assess their trait mindfulness. By random assignment, participants were then exposed to an experimental manipulation of a social media experience, during which they received either one or five likes from 11 online interaction partners. Finally, their states of psychological distress, negative emotion, hostility, and antisocial tendency were assessed.
Results
The results showed that trait mindfulness significantly moderated the effects of feeling left out on social media on these maladjustment outcomes. Compared with participants with low trait mindfulness, those with high mindfulness reported lower levels of psychological distress, negative emotion, hostility, and antisocial tendency after they had received little attention on social media.
Conclusions
These findings highlight the important role of mindfulness in ameliorating the negative outcomes associated with feeling left out on social media.
Accomplishing goals with others can be troublesome. Some people may work extra hard while others do much less. When does this workload asymmetry occur? The present research investigates the role of perceived partners’ self‐control in workload distribution. Specifically, we tested the hypothesis that high self‐control individuals work harder and compensate when they work together with low self‐control partners. Results from two studies indicate that high self‐control individuals are sensitive to their partners’ level of self‐control and adjust their behavior accordingly (i.e., exerting extra effort) when working with them.
This meta-analytic review responds to promises in the research literature and public domain about the benefits of workplace mindfulness training. It synthesizes randomized controlled trial evidence from workplace-delivered training for changes in mindfulness, stress, mental health, well-being, and work performance outcomes. Going beyond extant reviews, this article explores the influence of variability in workforce and intervention characteristics for reducing perceived stress. Meta-effect estimates (Hedge’s g) were computed using data from 23 studies. Results indicate beneficial effects following training for mindfulness (g � 0.45, p � .001) and stress (g � 0.56, p � .001), anxiety (g � 0.62, p � .001) and psychological distress (g � 0.69, p � .001), and for well-being (g � 0.46, p � .002) and sleep (g � 0.26, p � .003). No conclusions could be drawn from pooled data for burnout due to ambivalence in results, for depression due to publication bias, or for work performance due to insufficient data. The potential for integrating the construct of mindfulness within job demands-resources, coping, and prevention theories of work stress is considered in relation to the results. Limitations to study designs and reporting are addressed, and recommendations to advance research in this field are made.
Significance
Many people consume news via social media. It is therefore desirable to reduce social media users’ exposure to low-quality news content. One possible intervention is for social media ranking algorithms to show relatively less content from sources that users deem to be untrustworthy. But are laypeople’s judgments reliable indicators of quality, or are they corrupted by either partisan bias or lack of information? Perhaps surprisingly, we find that laypeople—on average—are quite good at distinguishing between lower- and higher-quality sources. These results indicate that incorporating the trust ratings of laypeople into social media ranking algorithms may prove an effective intervention against misinformation, fake news, and news content with heavy political bias.
Introduction: Given the breadth of correlational research linking social media
use to worse well-being, we undertook an experimental study to investigate the
potential causal role that social media plays in this relationship. Method: After a
week of baseline monitoring, 143 undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania
were randomly assigned to either limit Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat
use to 10 minutes, per platform, per day, or to use social media as usual for three
weeks. Results: The limited use group showed significant reductions in loneliness
and depression over three weeks compared to the control group. Both groups
showed significant decreases in anxiety and fear of missing out over baseline,
suggesting a benefit of increased self-monitoring. Discussion: Our findings strongly
suggest that limiting social media use to approximately 30 minutes per day may
lead to significant improvement in well-being.
Although prior studies have to some extent clarified the mechanism underlying the development of social media burnout, the present study contributes to the literature by showing how social media addiction contributes to this phenomenon. Chinese university students (N = 519) completed self-report questionnaires on social media addiction, social media burnout, envy, and social media use anxiety. The results showed that addiction, envy, and social media use anxiety were all significant predictors of burnout. Moreover, envy and social media use anxiety mediated the relationship between social media addiction and burnout, both in parallel and as a pair in series. Considering the negative effect of social media burnout such as depression, the findings may provide new path to understand the detrimental of excessive use of social media toward corresponding psychological outcomes.
Over the past 30 years, conservation of resources (COR) theory has become one of the most widely cited theories in organizational psychology and organizational behavior. COR theory has been adopted across the many areas of the stress spectrum, from burnout to traumatic stress. Further attesting to the theory’s centrality, COR theory is largely the basis for the more work-specific leading theory of organizational stress, namely the job demands-resources model. One of the major advantages of COR theory is its ability to make a wide range of specific hypotheses that are much broader than those offered by theories that focus on a single central resource, such as control, or that speak about resources in general. In this article, we will revisit the principles and corollaries of COR theory that inform those more specific hypotheses and will review research in organizational behavior that has relied on the theory. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior Volume 5 is January 21, 2018. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Personal social media use at work is usually deemed counterproductive work behaviour reducing employee productivity. However, we hypothesized that it may actually help employees to coordinate work and nonwork demands, which should in turn increase work-related creativity. We used ecological momentary assessment across one working day with up to ten hourly measurements on 337 white-collar workers to measure personal social media use, work-nonwork balance and creativity, resulting in a total of 2244 hourly measurements. Multilevel modelling revealed that personal social media use was associated with better work-nonwork balance, but with lower levels of creativity between- and within-persons. Work-nonwork balance did not mediate the relationship between personal social media use and creativity. More research is needed to understand why employees use social media at work for personal purposes and how this affects their well-being and job performance.
Free copies of the article available via: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/W3urDpIU8TGCwBVzdxMq/full
Social media has been established in many larger emergencies and crises. This process has not started just a few years ago, but already 15 years ago in 2001 after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. In the following years, especially in the last 10, sometimes summarized under the term crisis informatics, a variety of studies focusing on the use of ICT and social media before, during or after nearly every crisis and emergency has arisen. This article aimed to recapitulate 15 years of social media in emergencies and its research with a special emphasis on use patterns, role patterns and perception patterns that can be found across different cases to point out what has been achieved so far, and what future potentials exist.
While smartphones and related mobile technologies are recognized as flexible and powerful tools that, when used prudently, can augment human cognition, there is also a growing perception that habitual involvement with these devices may have a negative and lasting impact on users’ ability to think, remember, pay attention, and regulate emotion. The present review considers an intensifying, though still limited, area of research exploring the potential cognitive impacts of smartphone-related habits, and seeks to determine in which domains of functioning there is accruing evidence of a significant relationship between smartphone technology and cognitive performance, and in which domains the scientific literature is not yet mature enough to endorse any firm conclusions. We focus our review primarily on three facets of cognition that are clearly implicated in public discourse regarding the impacts of mobile technology – attention, memory, and delay of gratification – and then consider evidence regarding the broader relationships between smartphone habits and everyday cognitive functioning. Along the way, we highlight compelling findings, discuss limitations with respect to empirical methodology and interpretation, and offer suggestions for how the field might progress toward a more coherent and robust area of scientific inquiry.
Our smartphones enable—and encourage—constant connection to information, entertainment, and each other. They put the world at our fingertips, and rarely leave our sides. Although these devices have immense potential to improve welfare, their persistent presence may come at a cognitive cost. In this research, we test the “brain drain” hypothesis that the mere presence of one’s own smartphone may occupy limited-capacity cognitive resources, thereby leaving fewer resources available for other tasks and undercutting cognitive performance. Results from two experiments indicate that even when people are successful at maintaining sustained attention—as when avoiding the temptation to check their phones—the mere presence of these devices reduces available cognitive capacity. Moreover, these cognitive costs are highest for those highest in smartphone dependence. We conclude by discussing the practical implications of this smartphone-induced brain drain for consumer decision-making and consumer welfare.
Geo-tagging features in social media apps allow users to announce their precise location with great ease and convenience, but geo-tagging poses some serious risks to users' privacy since it involves revelation of one's physical location, a form of personal data, to other users within and across social networks, making them vulnerable to various online and offline attacks, ranging from users being stalked to their identities being stolen. Despite these risks, geo-tagging is increasingly becoming a popular culture in the virtual realm of social media. This study explores why individuals geo-tag on social media by drawing from self-determination theory and privacy calculus to illustrate the underlying factors that influence users to engage in geo-tagging behavior on social media platforms. Based on an online survey administered to 834 active users of social media, this study contends that users' interpersonal competence and self-regulation influence their online affiliation need, which, in turn, affects their geo-tagging behavior. Additionally, we find that perceived benefit and risk have moderation effects on the association between users' online affiliation need and their geo-tagging behavior.
Despite the wide use of social media in the workplace, only limited research has addressed how social media use at work would influence employees’ work and affective outcomes. Building upon the self-regulatory perspective, the current study proposes that social media use at work will induce interruptions and procrastination, which in turn will reduce employees’ work engagement; individuals then will show the feeling of guilt because of decreased work engagement. This study examines the proposed theoretical model with an experience sample methodology (ESM), moving beyond predominant between-person designs in the social media use literature. 155 full-time employees were recruited and asked to report their daily experiences for ten consecutive workdays, finally resulting in 1165 data points at the within-person level. Results showed that daily social media use at work exerted a negative indirect effect on work engagement via procrastination, and it also had a positive indirect effect on guilt via interruption and procrastination. This study helps to elucidate the underlying mechanisms between social media use at work and employee outcomes, as well as enriching the literature by examining guilt as the psychological cost of using social media in the workplace.
Research on the effects of social media use by employees on work behaviors is inconclusive and showed mixed findings. To bring clarity to the extant literature, instead of focusing on generic social media use, we focus on a specific social media behavior—communication via social media with coworkers and friends—and theorize that it simultaneously triggers positive and negative effects on work behaviors through the mediation of opposite emotions. More specifically, our empirical study shows that employee communication via social media leads simultaneously to positive behaviors, predicting organizational citizenship behaviors, and negative behaviors, predicting counterproductive work behaviors. Happiness mediates the relationship between communication with social media and organizational citizenship behavior. Fatigue mediates the relationship between communication with social media and counterproductive work behaviors. The negative effects are stronger for communication with friends while the positive effects are more pronounced for communication with colleagues. Results are particularly revealing. Paradoxically, communication via social media makes employees happy and tired at the same time, making them likely to support the organization and coworkers while simultaneously working in counterproductive manner.
This study aims to understand the extent to which a time of emergency, (e.g. the COVID-19 pandemic), impacts consumer behaviour in terms of risk and expectations. The methodology involves the systematic content analysis of 15,000 tweets collected from three countries (UK, Italy and Spain) in April 2020. The results suggest that the top-of-mind expectation by consumers deals with escaping from home and enjoying freedom, either by having a good meal (UK), drinking alcoholic beverages (Spain), or travelling (Italy). They also suggest that the high levels of risk individuals were exposed to during the pandemic will not influence behavior in the long-term post-lockdown. Instead, they suggest consumers are willing to restore their consumption levels especially of activities that contribute to the sense of escapism. Finally, results provide evidence of the cultural differences emerging from consumers from different countries during the pandemic. Implications for international marketers and retailers are provided.
The outbreak of Covid-19 has significantly restricted people’s everyday life and contributed to enhanced social media use (SMU). The present study investigated the relationship of burden caused by Covid-19 and addictive SMU. Data were assessed in a sample of 550 users of social media (age: M(SD)= 27.08(6.74)) from Germany via online surveys in spring 2020. In a moderated mediation analysis, the positive association between burden and addictive SMU was significantly mediated by the level of perceived sense of control. Anxiety symptoms significantly moderated the relationship between sense of control and addictive SMU. Specifically, the link between both variables was significant only for medium and high levels of anxiety symptoms. The present findings disclose the mechanisms that can contribute to the development of addictive tendencies during the pandemic outbreak. Potential practical implications and ways of how the negative consequences of burden caused by Covid-19 might be prevented are discussed.
Current literature suggests problematic social media use (PSMU) predicts reduced social and psychological well-being. Lonely people are more prone to experience the negative outcomes of PSMU, but only few studies have focused explicitly on how loneliness affects the relationship between PSMU and subjective well-being experiences. In this paper, we examine if loneliness influences the association between PSMU and life satisfaction. We used nationally representative cross-sectional data from Finnish social media users (N = 2991) and follow-up panel data (N = 2021). First, we tested if PSMU affects satisfaction with life indirectly through loneliness while controlling for a set of background variables. Next, we examined whether changes in PSMU and loneliness affect life satisfaction over time. First analyses showed that PSMU was associated with life satisfaction negatively, but the effect was largely confounded by loneliness. Longitudinal analysis revealed increased PSMU did not predict decreased satisfaction with life within individuals, but increased PSMU predicted increased loneliness, and increased loneliness predicted decreased satisfaction with life. The analyses indicate that loneliness is a crucial element that contributes to the relationship between PSMU and life satisfaction. In addition, earlier observations that PSMU might increase loneliness over time were confirmed.
In response to reports of people experiencing varying levels of anxiety and depression during the outbreak of COVID-19, researchers have argued that exposure to related information on social media is a salient contributing factor. Based on the integrated model of ruminative response style and the diathesis-stress model, it has been suggested that incorporating rumination and mindfulness may elucidate the potential mechanism underlying the aforementioned association. This study aimed to examine the mediating role of rumination and the moderating role of mindfulness in the association between social media exposure (SME) to COVID-19 information and psychological distress. The results from online questionnaire responses of 439 college students from two universities in Wuhan, Hubei Province, showed that rumination mediated the association between SME and psychological distress. Furthermore, mindfulness was revealed as a protective factor that buffered the adverse effect of SME on psychological distress through rumination. These findings advance a better understanding of the formation process of psychological symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic and provide insights regarding effective interventions for adverse mental health consequences in college students.
In highly volatile contexts such as health care, employees are exposed to events that impact their daily well-being. Drawing largely from stress process and identity theories, we examined the within-person relationship between perceived control over salient work events and well-being (e.g., emotional exhaustion, psychological vitality) among full-time registered nurses. We also considered how two interrelated, yet distinct, aspects of the self—identity commitment and self-esteem—moderated the aforementioned relationships. Using daily diary surveys collected over six consecutive shifts, we found that perceived control over a salient work event was negatively related to emotional exhaustion and positively related to psychological vitality at the end of the shift. These within-person effects were strengthened for nurses who had higher levels of identity commitment to the nursing role, lending support to the view that the well-being effects of perceived control in work events depend on the importance of the job for the nurses' identity. Further, the negative relationship between perceived control and emotional exhaustion was weakened among nurses' reporting higher self-esteem, suggesting that self-esteem may act as a resource that buffers the harmful effects of low perceived control during work events. Finally, perceived control, identity commitment, and self-esteem combined to predict well-being, suggesting that low perceived control is particularly harmful when one is very committed to the nursing role identity while also having low self-esteem. Together, our results clarify how aspects of the self-shape the effects of nurses' perceptions of control on day-level well-being.
We review research showing that rumination has multiple negative consequences: (a) exacerbating psychopathology by magnifying and prolonging negative mood states, interfering with problem-solving and instrumental behaviour and reducing sensitivity to changing contingencies; (b) acting as a transdiagnostic mental health vulnerability impacting anxiety, depression, psychosis, insomnia, and impulsive behaviours; (c) interfering with therapy and limiting the efficacy of psychological interventions; (d) exacerbating and maintaining physiological stress responses. The mechanisms underlying rumination are examined, and a model (H-EX-A-GO-N - Habit development, EXecutive control, Abstract processing, GOal discrepancies, Negative bias) is proposed to account for the onset and maintenance of rumination. H-EX-A-GO-N outlines how rumination results from dwelling on problematic goals developing into a learnt habit that involves the tendency to process negative information in an abstract way, particularly in the context of poor executive control and negative information-processing biases. These proximal factors integrate experimental evidence to provide a partial answer to the critical question of what maintains rumination. They constitute a pathway by which more distal biological and environmental factors increase the likelihood of rumination developing. Treatments for rumination are reviewed, with preliminary trials suggesting that psychological interventions designed to specifically target these mechanisms may be effective at reducing rumination.
Mobile social networking sites (SNS) are frequently theorized to lead to perceived information overload, which may affect the well-being of individuals in negative ways. However, the available body of research is mainly based on cross-sectional data. Based on the limited capacity model of motivated mediated message processing (Lang, 2002), we tested the over-time relationships between mobile SNS use, information overload, depressive symptoms, and well-being in a two-wave panel study. Using a quota sample of adults (NT2 = 461), we found that YouTube use increased perceived information overload for all individuals. WhatsApp and Snapchat use did only lead to perceived information overload for older adults. Facebook as well as Instagram use were unrelated to perceived information overload. Furthermore, perceptions of information overload were a significant predictor of depressive symptoms, which in turn, negatively influenced individuals’ well-being over time. Implications of these findings are discussed.
Since online digital game addiction became one of the serious social computing issues related to public health, there has been an unprecedented need to explore and understand online digital game addiction from a psychosocial perspective. Extant studies have empirically tested the effects of as well as the relationship among prominent psychological distresses such as depression, loneliness and aggression on game addiction. Likewise, previous studies have also empirically established that social interaction may take a different form and alter the social exchanges in ways that may be particularly attractive to those who are lonely. This way, online social interaction within the interfaces of digital games such as MMORPGs can become a substitute for real-life social interaction because of the online anonymity and lack of physical presence which allow users to control social interaction. However, a few studies have explored the relationships among individuals’ need for online social interaction, interpersonal incompetence and self-regulation (control) and their effects on game addiction. In addition, the mediating role of individuals’ need for online social interaction in online digital game addiction has neither been proposed nor empirically tested. The main purpose of this study is to examine digital game addiction from the perspectives of individuals’ need for online social interaction, interpersonal incompetence, self-regulation and loneliness. We believe that the findings of this study will offer new insights to policymakers in dealing with the issues of digital game addiction. More specifically, the purpose of this study is to understand the mediation effect of individuals’ need for online social interaction on game addiction.
Pervasive social media has resulted in technology dependency and excessive usage, which can lead to negative outcomes in organizations. This paper aims to investigate the effects of social media’s different excessive usage patterns on employee job performance and the corresponding underlying mechanism. Specifically, we propose three dimensions of excessive social media use at work (i.e., excessive social, hedonic, and cognitive). These dimensions are related to technology-work conflict and strain, which in turn decrease employee job performance. An empirical study of 305 social media users in organizations reveals that excessive social media use for socialization and entertainment can generate conflict between technology use and work demand, whereas excessive social media use for information-sharing reduces employees’ psychological strain. In addition, technology-work conflict and strain negatively influence job performance. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are also discussed.
We investigate the intersection of social media and the workplace, focusing on job performance impacts of employees’ social media addictions and social media reactions through work–family balance and burnout. The research model is grounded in conservation of resources theory, which suggests social media compulsions and emotional reactions to co-worker’s social media posts will deplete employees’ energetic and constructive resources, making it difficult to achieve work-family balance and increasing the likelihood of job burnout, and will ultimately degrade job performance. A sample of 326 full-time employees revealed a negative relationship between social media addiction and work-family balance and a positive relationship between social media reactions and job burnout. Balance and burnout mediated the relationship between social media and job performance such that social media addiction was negatively related to job performance through work–family balance, and social media reactions were negatively related to performance through burnout and work–family conflict.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of excessive social media use on individual job performance and its exact mechanism. An extended stressor–strain–outcome research model is proposed to explain how excessive social media use at work influences individual job performance.
Design/methodology/approach
The research model was empirically tested with an online survey study of 230 working professionals who use social media in organizations.
Findings
The results revealed that excessive social media use was a determinant of three types of social media overload (i.e. information, communication and social overload). Information and communication overload were significant stressors that influence social media exhaustion, while social overload was not a significant predictor of exhaustion. Furthermore, social media exhaustion significantly reduces individual job performance.
Originality/value
Theory-driven investigation of the effects of excessive social media use on individual job performance is still relatively scarce, underscoring the need for theoretically-based research of excessive social media use at work. This paper enriches social media research by presenting an extended stressor–strain–outcome model to explore the exact mechanism of excessive use of social media at work, and identifying three components of social media-related overload, including information, communication and social overload. It is an initial attempt to systematically validate the casual relationships among excessive usage experience, overload, exhaustion and individual job performance based on the transactional theory of stress and coping.
An experience sampling study with a large community sample (N = 3327) furnished data on trait and state self-control in everyday life. State measures were self-reports of ego-depleting events (restraining self, effortful decisions, and pushing self to do unwanted tasks) and feelings of depletion (emotional overreactions, difficulty making up mind, less mental energy). People with high trait self-control reported fewer such feelings and events than others. Poor sleep quality and interpersonal conflict were strong predictors of depleted feelings, and indeed the combination of very poor sleep and high interpersonal conflict led to a dramatic spike in reports of extremely depleted feelings. Depleted feelings were positively correlated with being young, female, politically non-extreme, and less well educated, and with finding life less meaningful, as well as with multitasking and hurrying. They increased across the day despite drops after meal times, thus attesting to the value of food and sleep. Pain and illness also raised them. Among other implications, the data suggest a composite picture of the daily life of someone with low trait self-control: frequently rushing and hurrying, not thinking about what they are doing, and just responding automatically to the current situation, as well as suffering aftereffects of interpersonal conflict and poor quality sleep.
Social media has slowly become ubiquitous in the workplace; however, the use of these technologies has been associated with both positive and negative consequences. Using the JD-R model, this study examines these positive and negative consequences of the public social media use for work. Survey data of 421 employees is used to explore the relationship between public social media use for work and engagement, and exhaustion, through opposing mechanisms. The findings demonstrate that interruptions and work–life conflict are important demands, whereas accessibility and efficient communication are resources associated with social media use for work. These demands and resources are related to engagement and exhaustion.
Following the 2016 US presidential election, many have expressed concern about the effects of false stories ("fake news"), circulated largely through social media. We discuss the economics of fake news and present new data on its consumption prior to the election. Drawing on web browsing data, archives of fact-checking websites, and results from a new online survey, we find: 1) social media was an important but not dominant source of election news, with 14 percent of Americans calling social media their "most important" source; 2) of the known false news stories that appeared in the three months before the election, those favoring Trump were shared a total of 30 million times on Facebook, while those favoring Clinton were shared 8 million times; 3) the average American adult saw on the order of one or perhaps several fake news stories in the months around the election, with just over half of those who recalled seeing them believing them; and 4) people are much more likely to believe stories that favor their preferred candidate, especially if they have ideologically segregated social media networks.
Terrorist attacks have the capacity to threaten our beliefs about the world, cause distress across populations and promote discrimination towards particular groups. We examined the impact of two different types of attacks in the same city and same year on psychological distress and probable posttraumatic stress symptoms, and the moderating effects of religion or media use on distress/posttraumatic symptoms and inter-group relations. Two panel surveys four weeks after the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack (N = 1981) and the November 2015 Bataclan concert hall/restaurant attacks (N = 1878), measured intrinsic religiosity, social and traditional media use, psychological distress (K6), probable posttraumatic stress symptoms (proposed ICD-11), symbolic racism and willingness to interact with Muslims by non-Muslims. Prevalence of serious mental illness (K6 score > 18) was higher after November 2015 attacks (7.0% after the first attack, 10.2% the second, χ2 (1) = 5.67, p < 0.02), as were probable posttraumatic stress symptoms (11.9% vs. 14.1%; χ2 (1) = 4.15, p < 0.04). In structural equation analyses, sex, age, geographic proximity, media use and religiosity were associated with distress, as was the interaction between event and religiosity. Distress was then associated with racism symbolism and willingness to interact with Muslims. Implications are considered for managing psychological trauma across populations, and protecting inter-group harmony.