Examining The Antecedents Of Problematic Use Of Social Media

Social media has a greater impact on people,and people are increasingly dependent on social media for information seeking,social interaction and entertainment.However,social media use has also lead to a range of problematic behaviors,such as using social media while driving,listening to class lectures,attending meetings,or talking face to face with others,which has negative consequences for people's work,study and physical and mental health.So people want to take effective measures to control this problematic use behavior.Therefore,it is necessary to study the antecedents of the problematic use of social media.It helps people to understand its conceptualization and etiology,so that they can effectively avoiding the problematic use behavior.The extant literature mostly show that people's psychological characteristics,pers onality traits or the habits will lead to the problematic behavior.This paper draws o n Davis's cognition—behavior model and individual media dependence theory to inv estigate the drivers of the problematic use of social media.To explore whether the d ifferent dependency relations have different effects on the.maladaptive cognitions,and eventually producing the problematic use of social media.Moreover,we also investig ate the moderate effect of the self-control.The approach we took in empirically testing our proposed theoretical constructs and research model was a survey.We used the snowball method to conduct the survey and finally we totally recalled 422 valid questionnaires,and with the use of statistical analysis software SPSS and SmartPLS2.0,we test the validity of the questionnaires and the model.The main conclusions were as follows:(1)Orientation dependency relations and the entertainment dependency relations positively affect the cognition preoccupation and perceived irreplaceability;but the effect of understanding dependency relations on the cognition preoccupation and perceived irreplaceability is not significant.(2)The problematic use of social media is mainly caused by two kinds of maladaptive cognitions,namely the cognition preoccupation and perceived irreplaceability.Compared with the perceived irreplaceability,the cognition preoccupation on the problematic use of social media of positive effect is more significant.(3)The self-control could adjust the relationship between the maladaptive cognitions and the problematic use of social media.The higher the level of self-control is,the weaker the positive influence between them.The main innovations of this paper are as follows:(1)Draws on Davis's cognition—behavior model,we put forward two different type of maladaptive cognitions,namely the cognition preoccupation and perceived irreplaceability.There is little research point that what the specific two kinds of maladaptive cognitions are,so this paper enriches Davis's cognition-behavior model and also provides a reference for the future research.(2)This paper studied how the social media dependency relations affects users'problematic use behavior,thus provided a new perspective of the related research.Besides,this article also is of practical meanings.Firstly,the social media providers can help users reduce their problematic use by making it easier to monitor and govern their use.They may do so by providing,for example,easy to observe usage statistics and warnings to users or intermediary facilities to limit the amount of time on the system,which can serve to increase awareness of the need to inhibit one's behavior and ultimately allow stronger self-regulatory efforts.For example,when the user play WeChat while working,the system can use the anthropomorphic tone to remind the user not to distract.Secondly,users should also learn to better control their impulsions by understanding the nature of their problematic behavior and its risks,as well as avoiding the stimuli that can activate or strengthen their preoccupations.An example is switching off the notifications within the social media to avoid stimulant cues,such as WeChat notifications.Lastly,Educational institutions and corporate organizations can increase the cost of using social media in students or employees,thereby reducing problematic use.