Ephemeral But Influential? The Correlation between Facebook Stories Usage, Addiction, Narcissism, and Positive Affect

Abstract

Despite the steep increase in Facebook Stories users, there is scant research on this topic. This study compared the associations of frequency of Stories update, frequency of news feed updates, time spent reading Stories, and time spent reading news feeds, with regard to social media addiction, narcissism, and positive affect in college students. We recruited a sample of 316 college students from Taiwan. The analytical results show that Facebook Stories are more addictive and provoke more positive affect than conventional news feeds. Moreover, only usage behaviors associated with Stories predict narcissism. This study also found that the prediction of news feeds with regard to addiction, narcissism, and positive affect also seems to be diminishing and is being replaced by those of Stories. Future studies on the psychological consequences and predictors of social media usage should regard Stories as a crucial variable.