The Dark Side of Social Media: What Makes Some Users More Vulnerable Than Others?
Existing studies have not reached a consensus with regard to how social media may positively or negatively affect users’ well-being. In this study, we endeavor to contribute towards HCI/CSCW knowledge on this open space and offer more empirical evidence. In doing so, we conducted 10 semistructured in-depth interviews to explore the downsides of social media. We present four themes in social media use that adversely affect users’ well-being emerging in participants’ self-reports, namely, social comparison, fear of missing out, political discussions, and cyberbullying. Furthermore, we discuss two potential dynamics through which people consider their social media use negative to their well-being:
1) self-oriented internalization where users perceive the social media experience differently (negative or neutral) based on their personality traits.
2) content-oriented internalization where users perceive the experience negative regardless of their personality traits. We argue that identifying these two dynamics of internalization helps understand the complex relationships between social media use and user well-being, which can then inform the future design of social media systems to remedy these adverse social and psychological impacts.