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Self-esteem, generally understood as subjective appraisal of one’s social worth and qualities, is related to how people use social media and the gratifications derived from their use—processes driven in part by social comparison. Two major components of the social media experience drive social comparison processes: (1) what content people engage with (feeds content) and (2) how they engage with such content (engagement type). We conducted an eye-tracking study ( N = 38), to measure viewing time spent on individual Facebook posts and paired this measurement with clicking behaviors. We found that spending more time looking at posts and clicking on more of them was associated with lower self-esteem for people with more social content on their feeds. We discuss the importance of examining browsing behaviors as a combination of viewing time, clicking, and feed’s content—especially given its potential impact on well-being outcomes such as self-esteem via social comparison processes.
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Why We Don’t Click: Interrogating the Relationship Between Viewing and Clicking in Social Media Contexts by Exploring the “Non-Click”
Abstract Motivated by work that characterizes view-based social media practices as “passive use,” contrasting it with more desirable, interactive “active use,” this study explores how social media users understand their viewing and clicking practices and the empirical relationship between them. Employing a combination of eye tracking, survey, and interview methods, our study (N = 42) investigates the non-click—instances where people intentionally and thoughtfully do not click on content they spend time viewing. Counterintuitively, we find no difference in viewing duration to clicked versus non-clicked Facebook content. We find that use motivations and Facebook feed content are significant predictors of click behavior but measures of overall use, such as network size or minutes of use per day, are not. Our interview data reveal three audience-related concerns that contribute to deliberate non-clicking and illustrate how non-clicked content contributes to social connectedness when imported into other channels. We discuss implications for researchers, users, and designers.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1763297
- PAR ID:
- 10226818
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
- Volume:
- 25
- Issue:
- 6
- ISSN:
- 1083-6101
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 402 to 426
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmaa013
