The Relationship Between Social Media Usage,Acculturation And Psychological Well-being

Social media usage plays an important role in the acculturation process of cross-cultural groups,through which also affects their mental health.Since previous work has only focused on the pairwise relationships between soc.ial media,acculturation and mental health,the relationship between the three variables is still poorly understood.Therefore,the present study sought to investigate how they are related to each other.The study was divided into two parts.The first part examined the relationship between social media usage,acculturation and psychological well-being through a survey with 121 Chinese in New Zealand.The results showed that(1)higher use frequency of social media popular in New Zealand(NZ social media)was associated with higher score on identification with New Zealand(NZI)and lower score on identification with China(CNI);(2)the relationship between the use frequency of social media popular in CN(CN social media)and CNI or NZI was not statistically significant;(3)the use frequency of CN social media and NZ social media were significantly and positively correlated.(4)Both CNI and NZI were positively related to Happiness,but had no significant relationship with Depression;(5)The relationship between NZ social media use and Happ:iness was positively mediated by NZI.In-depth interview was utilized in the second part in order to interpret the role of social media in acculturation from the perspective of cultural structure.The analysis of interview materials showed that social media significantly promoted acculturation in explicit culture by providing information and entertainment.China's mainstream social media was an important channel for Chinese in New Zealand to maintain and extend the weak and strong ties with domestic and local Chinese,while New Zealand's mainstream social media were mainly used to maintain the established relationship with New Zealand friends.However,limited social media had a limited impact on tacit culture,mainly to display information containing implicit values.The findings of this study add to a growing body of literature on the correlations between social media,acculturation and psychological well-being and will help immigrants,sojourners and policy makers that work with immigrants to better understand acculturation.