Perceived Network Responsiveness as a Moderator of the Effects of Social Media Use on Wellbeing

Social media’s role in daily life is on the rise, but as social media use increases, so do questions about its potential benefits or harms. This set of studies examined the relationship between social media use, wellbeing, and perceived network responsiveness, a measure of an individual’s perception about the degree to which their online social networks are caring, validating, and understanding. Two pre-registered correlational studies which employed surveys of undergraduate students (Study 1a: N = 218, Study 1b: N = 179) found that perceived network responsiveness was positively correlated with life satisfaction and negatively correlated with loneliness. A pre-registered experimental study was also conducted in which young adults recruited from a crowdsourcing platform (N = 236) were randomly assigned to either reduce social media use to ten minutes per platform per day or to continue their normal use for one week. Participants completed nine surveys (an initial survey, seven daily surveys, and one follow-up survey) about their wellbeing, perceived network responsiveness, and social media use. The results of the initial survey also showed that perceived network responsiveness was positively correlated with life satisfaction and negatively correlated with loneliness. Contrary to predictions, the relationship between experimentally manipulated social media use and change in wellbeing outcomes (i.e., life satisfaction and loneliness) was not significantly moderated by perceived network responsiveness. Additionally, there were no significant differences between conditions with regard to wellbeing outcomes. Overall, these studies demonstrated an association between perceived network responsiveness and wellbeing while underscoring the need for focus on the more social aspects of social media use.