IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/tjisxx/v24y2015i5p447-464.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Giving too much social support: social overload on social networking sites

Author

Listed:
  • Christian Maier
  • Sven Laumer
  • Andreas Eckhardt
  • Tim Weitzel

Abstract

As the number of messages and social relationships embedded in social networking sites (SNS) increases, the amount of social information demanding a reaction from individuals increases as well. We observe that, as a consequence, SNS users feel they are giving too much social support to other SNS users. Drawing on social support theory (SST), we call this negative association with SNS usage ‘social overload’ and develop a latent variable to measure it. We then identify the theoretical antecedents and consequences of social overload and evaluate the social overload model empirically using interviews with 12 and a survey of 571 Facebook users. The results show that extent of usage, number of friends, subjective social support norms, and type of relationship (online-only vs offline friends) are factors that directly contribute to social overload while age has only an indirect effect. The psychological and behavioral consequences of social overload include feelings of SNS exhaustion by users, low levels of user satisfaction, and a high intention to reduce or even stop using SNS. The resulting theoretical implications for SST and SNS acceptance research are discussed and practical implications for organizations, SNS providers, and SNS users are drawn.

Suggested Citation

  • Christian Maier & Sven Laumer & Andreas Eckhardt & Tim Weitzel, 2015. "Giving too much social support: social overload on social networking sites," European Journal of Information Systems, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(5), pages 447-464, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:tjisxx:v:24:y:2015:i:5:p:447-464
    DOI: 10.1057/ejis.2014.3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1057/ejis.2014.3
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/ejis.2014.3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yogesh K Dwivedi & Elvira Ismagilova & Prianka Sarker & Anand Jeyaraj & Yassine Jadil & Laurie Hughes, 2023. "A Meta-Analytic Structural Equation Model for Understanding Social Commerce Adoption," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 25(4), pages 1421-1437, August.
    2. Luo, Lijuan & Xu, Meiling & Zheng, Yujie, 2024. "Informative or affective? Exploring the effects of streamers’ topic types on user engagement in live streaming commerce," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    3. Davit Marikyan & Savvas Papagiannidis & Eleftherios Alamanos, 2023. "Cognitive Dissonance in Technology Adoption: A Study of Smart Home Users," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 1101-1123, June.
    4. Khedhaouria, Anis & Montani, Francesco & Jamal, Arshad & Hussain Shah, Mahmood, 2024. "Consequences of technostress for users in remote (home) work contexts during a time of crisis: The buffering role of emotional social support," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 199(C).
    5. Jabeen, Fauzia & Tandon, Anushree & Azad, Nasreen & Islam, A.K.M. Najmul & Pereira, Vijay, 2023. "The dark side of social media platforms: A situation-organism-behaviour-consequence approach," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 186(PA).
    6. Zhou, Fei & Lin, Youhai & Mou, Jian & Cohen, Jason & Chen, Sihua, 2023. "Understanding the dark side of gamified interactions on short-form video platforms: Through a lens of expectations violations theory," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 186(PB).
    7. Sharma, Manu & Kaushal, Deepak & Joshi, Sudhanshu, 2023. "Adverse effect of social media on generation Z user's behavior: Government information support as a moderating variable," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    8. Thomas Cyron & Marcel Garz & Norbert Steigenberger, 2024. "Beware the community type: engagement and growth in core vs. open online communities," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 62(4), pages 1383-1407, April.
    9. Jabeen, Fauzia & Tandon, Anushree & Sithipolvanichgul, Juthamon & Srivastava, Shalini & Dhir, Amandeep, 2023. "Social media-induced fear of missing out (FoMO) and social media fatigue: The role of narcissism, comparison and disclosure," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    10. Dilek Åžahin, 2023. "Mediating Effect of Creativity on How Burnout Affects Social Media Use: An Examination on Physicians," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(4), pages 21582440231, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:tjisxx:v:24:y:2015:i:5:p:447-464. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/tjis .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.