Social networking’s peril: Cognitive absorption, social networking usage, and depression

Abstract

Social networking has become commonplace in today’s always-connected world. Due to this ubiquity, researchers have sought to explore the positive and negative effects that can result from usage of social networking. This research has shown many effects on an individual's psychological well-being, with one of the most concerning being mixed results of how usage relates to depression. In this study, we further examine the relationship between usage and depression for social networking users. In addition, we posit that aspects of cognitive absorption, namely temporal dissonance, focused immersion, and heightened enjoyment, have a direct effect on the amount of usage. A survey of 251 social networking users reveals that temporal dissociation and heightened enjoyment are associated with increased usage, and usage was found to be associated with greater levels of depression. Further, prior research has shown a significant difference between genders in Internet usage and social networking. Therefore, we report our findings as an overall analysis and as a gender-based between-groups analysis. This analysis shows that more variance is explained for females than males in most relationships. Implications for research and society are discussed along with future research directions.