The Social Media Grasp: Understanding Its Mediating Relationship to Social Media Use

Abstract

Social media anxiety has become a focal point explaining continued use of social media despite aggressive social content. Using structural equation modeling, we examine a conceptual model explaining social media use that includes the constructs of social interactive anxiety, social media anxiety, and antisocial online behavior, which is divided into aggressive and non-aggressive antisocial cyber content. Our sample includes respondents of multiple age-groups that is representative of the actual social media population. We have surveyed users of six popular social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Linked-In, and Pinterest. Results show that social anxious individuals participate more actively in social media when social media anxiety is present. Thus, despite increased social media anxiety, social anxious individuals remain online using social media platforms. We also see evidence that exposure to nonaggressive antisocial content leads to exposure to aggressive antisocial content. This aggressive antisocial content increases social media anxiety.