People Tend to Wind Down, Not Up, When They Browse Social Media
Abstract
Researchers have focused intensively on the emotional effects of browsing social media, with many emphasizing possible negative effects and others suggesting the positive emotions in status updates are contagious. Despite this focus, however, very few studies have investigated the actual emotional experience of browsing social media in the moment, and none with more than a few emotions, making it difficult to understand the effects research should endeavor to explain. To address this gap, I use experience sampling with diverse samples of Facebook (N = 362) and Twitter (N = 416) users, assessing the browsing experience across a wide range of emotions. Surprisingly, results provide little evidence of robust positive or negative effects, suggesting instead that the primary effect of browsing social media is a lessening of arousal. That is, contrary to stereotype, people tend to wind down - feel more relaxed, sleepy, bored and so on - not wind up.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
La comunicación digital hace posible un transporte inmediato del afecto, caracterizándose por ser el 'medio del afecto'.
“como señala Panger (2018), la comunicación digital hace posible un transporte inmediato del afecto caracterizándose por ser el “medio del afecto”.”
From Homofilia, polarización afectiva y desinformación en Twitter. Caso de estudio sobre la crisis migratoria #Openarms (2021) · cites this paper as Panger (2018)
Cites
Fredrickson, B. L. (2001) · American Psychologist · doi:10.1037//0003-066x.56.3.218 · Cited by 3,512 · see citing works
What Makes Online Content Viral?
Berger, J., & Milkman, K. L. (2012) · Journal of Marketing Research · doi:10.1509/jmr.10.0353 · Cited by 3,178 · cited 1× · see citing works
“Whereas prior research suggests arousal promotes information sharing [9, 10] — which implies the status updates people browse on Facebook and Twitter should be characterized by higher arousal — results in this study suggest browsing Facebook and Twitter is characterized by lower arousal, and robustly so.”
BackgroundBelief and feeling: Evidence for an accessibility model of emotional self-report.
Robinson, M. D., & Clore, G. L. (2002) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.128.6.934 · Cited by 1,806 · see citing works
Social comparison, social media, and self-esteem.
Vogel, E. A., Rose, J. P., Roberts, L. R., & Eckles, K. (2014) · Psychology of Popular Media Culture · doi:10.1037/ppm0000047 · Cited by 1,418 · see citing works
Hektner, J., Schmidt, J., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2007) · doi:10.4135/9781412984201 · Cited by 1,174 · see citing works
Chou, H.-T. G., & Edge, N. (2012) · Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking · doi:10.1089/cyber.2011.0324 · Cited by 1,166 · see citing works
Passive Facebook usage undermines affective well-being: Experimental and longitudinal evidence.
Verduyn, P., Lee, D. S., Park, J., Shablack, H., Orvell, A., Bayer, J., Ybarra, O., Jonides, J., & Kross, E. (2015) · Journal of Experimental Psychology: General · doi:10.1037/xge0000057 · Cited by 988 · cited 2× · see citing works
“find in a one-week experience sampling study with college-age participants that people feel worse at one survey point the more they have browsed Facebook since the last survey, and find the effect is mediated by feelings of envy [82].”
BackgroundFacebook use, envy, and depression among college students: is facebooking depressing?
Tandoc, E. C., Ferrucci, P., & Duffy, M. (2015) · Computers in Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.chb.2014.10.053 · Cited by 781 · see citing works
Fox, J., & Moreland, J. J. (2015) · Computers in Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.chb.2014.11.083 · Cited by 763 · see citing works
Happiness in Everyday Life: The Uses of Experience Sampling
Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Hunter, J. (2003) · Journal of Happiness Studies · doi:10.1023/a:1024409732742 · Cited by 717 · see citing works
Arousal Increases Social Transmission of Information
Berger, J. (2011) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/0956797611413294 · Cited by 600 · see citing works
Burke, M., & Kraut, R. E. (2016) · Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication · doi:10.1111/jcc4.12162 · Cited by 552 · see citing works
How do people compare themselves with others on social network sites?: The case of Facebook
Lee, S. Y. (2014) · Computers in Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.chb.2013.12.009 · Cited by 437 · see citing works
Sagioglou, C., & Greitemeyer, T. (2014) · Computers in Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.chb.2014.03.003 · Cited by 387 · cited 3× · see citing works
“Similarly, Sagioglou and Greitemeyer find people feel worse when experimentally assigned to use Facebook for 20 minutes compared to control activities [69], while Tromholt finds with a large and age-diverse sample that experimentally assigning people to stop using Facebook for one week improves their day-to-day emotio…”
BackgroundKrasnova, H., Widjaja, T., Buxmann, P., Wenninger, H., & Benbasat, I. (2015) · Information Systems Research · doi:10.1287/isre.2015.0588 · Cited by 304 · see citing works
Envy on Facebook: a hidden threat to users' life satisfaction?
Krasnova, H., Wenninger, H., Widjaja, T., & Buxmann, P. (2013) · University of Bern · doi:10.7892/boris.47080 · Cited by 290 · cited 1× · see citing works
“In related studies, Krasnova and colleagues find that viewing the travel and leisure photos of friends is a major source of envy, and that people who experience envy while browsing Facebook are more likely to compensate by posting their own self-enhancing photos and status updates [48, 49].”
BackgroundReinecke, L., & Hofmann, W. (2016) · Human Communication Research · doi:10.1111/hcre.12082 · Cited by 160 · see citing works
Hinsch, C., & Sheldon, K. M. (2013) · Journal of Consumer Behaviour · doi:10.1002/cb.1453 · Cited by 135 · cited 2× · see citing works
“Although they involve brief timeframes in comparison to Burke’s month-long intervals between survey waves, several studies do suggest Facebook use as a whole may be detrimental to emotional and other forms of well-being [43, 50, 69, 79].”
BackgroundPerceived Stress and Salivary Cortisol in Daily Life
van Eck, M. M., & Nicolson, N. A. (1994) · Annals of Behavioral Medicine · doi:10.1093/abm/16.3.221 · Cited by 113 · see citing works
Once More with Feeling: Supportive Responses to Social Sharing on Facebook
Burke, M., & Develin, M. (2016) · Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing · doi:10.1145/2818048.2835199 · Cited by 89 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Castillo-de-Mesa, J., Méndez-Domínguez, P., Carbonero-Muñoz, D., & Gómez-Jacinto, L. (2021) · Redes. Revista hispana para el análisis de redes sociales · doi:10.5565/rev/redes.913 · Cited by 13 · see citing works
- Authors
- Panger, G.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
- Corresponding author
- Panger, Galen
- Venue
- Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
- Published
- 2018-11
- Volume
- 2
- Issue
- CSCW
- Pages
- 1-29
- ISSN
- 2573-0142 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2899070268
- Cited by
- 16
- References
- 20
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 2.84
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Impact of Technology on Adolescents
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Innovative Human-Technology Interaction
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › Media and Digital Communication
- Keywords
- emotional experience, arousal, relaxation, boredom, Facebook, Twitter, momentary emotions, status updates, emotional contagion
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
