Elsevier

Computers in Human Behavior

Volume 28, Issue 5, September 2012, Pages 1829-1839
Computers in Human Behavior

A dynamic longitudinal examination of social media use, needs, and gratifications among college students

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2012.05.001Get rights and content

Abstract

This study extends the U&G theoretical perspective to account for the situated, adaptive, and dynamic nature of mediated cognition and behavior. It specifies dynamic uses and gratifications of social media (compared to other media) in the everyday lives of college students using experience sampling data across 4 weeks. The study tests and quantifies reciprocal causal relationships between needs, social media use, and gratifications, as well as their self-sustaining endogenous (i.e., feedback) effects. Social media use is significantly driven by all four categories of needs examined (emotional, cognitive, social, and habitual), but only gratifies some of them. Ungratified needs accumulate over time and drive subsequent social media use. Interpersonal social environments also affect social media use. In particular, solitude and interpersonal support increase social media use, and moderate the effects of needs on social media use.

Highlights

► Dynamic uses and gratifications of social media in the everyday lives over time. ► Reciprocal influences between needs, social media use, and gratifications. ► Ungratified needs accumulate over time and drive subsequent social media use. ► Solitude and interpersonal support increase social media use. ► They also moderate the effects of needs on social media use.

Introduction

Social media (SM) have become increasingly pervasive in American society. As of 2011, two thirds (65%) of adult internet users engage in activities on social networking sites, compared to less than one third (29%) 3 years ago, and less than one tenth (8%) 6 years ago (Madden & Zickuhr, 2011). For young adults between 18 and 29 years old, social media use is even more common—as of 2010, it was at 72% (Lenhart, Purcell, Smith, & Zickuhr, 2010). Media campaigns, including health and political campaigns, try to identify effective ways to reach, engage, and influence SM users (e.g., Abroms and Lefebvre, 2009, Cooke and Buckley, 2008). Some basic questions to be answered include: What needs drive individuals’ SM use? Are they fulfilled? How are the fluctuations in the needs and their fulfillment—or lack thereof—changing users’ behavior over time? Uses and gratifications (U&G) research has started to examine what motivates SM use (e.g., Dunne et al., 2010, Leung, 2009).

The current study aims to extend the U&G theoretical perspective to account for the situated, adaptive, and dynamic nature of cognition and behavior (Wang et al., 2006, Wang et al., 2011, Ward, 2002). By this theoretical extension, SM use can be better understood in two important ways. First, dynamic reciprocal causal effects between SM use, needs, and gratifications over time can be tested and quantified. Second, SM use is situated in the context of daily life. The conceptual model and the dynamic analysis in this study test the influences on SM use not only from preceding media use (i.e., in the context of time), but also from individuals’ interpersonal social environments.

SM are websites and software that serve a primary function of allowing users to “connect, communicate, and interact with each other” (Correa, Hinsley, & Gil de Zúñiga, 2010, p. 248), often by posting, sharing, or co-producing information (Kushin & Yamamoto, 2010). Our conceptualization of SM therefore includes several overlapping domains: social networking sites (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn), tools for communication with others (e.g., email, instant messaging), and sites for the sharing of information, which generally can be commented on or altered by others (e.g., blogs, YouTube). To identify the characteristics of SM use, this study compares SM, wherein social interaction is a fundamental component, to all other media (OM), such as television and radio, which are not typically perceived as inherently and primarily social.

Section snippets

Use, needs, and gratifications of social media

Over the past few decades, when new forms of media have emerged, the classic theoretical perspective of U&G has often been used to examine “new” media use behavioral patterns and their underlying motivation (Katz et al., 1973, Rubin, 2009). Historically, as an alternative to the earlier view of media effects that focuses on what media can do to passive audiences, the U&G perspective has led to a new understanding of audiences as active media users who choose media based upon a variety of needs.

The dynamic reciprocal effects of media uses, needs, and gratifications

Dynamic relationships of mutual influence abound in the world around us. The Dynamic Motivational Activation model (DMA, Wang et al., 2006, Wang et al., 2011, Wang and Tchernev, 2012) proposes that motivated media choices and use can change a user’s motivation in real time, which further influences subsequent media choices and use. This reciprocal causality, or mutual influence, between motivation (e.g., needs) and media use differs from typical conceptualizations of media effects which often

Participants and procedures

Undergraduate students (N = 28) at a large Midwestern university participated in the study for monetary compensation. On average, they were 21.43 (SD = 1.37) years old. Seventeen participants (60.7%) were female, and the majority (71.43%) were Caucasian. Using the experience sampling method (Kubey, Larson, & Csikszentmihalyi, 1996), participants submitted reports at regular time intervals throughout the day: around lunchtime, in the early evening, and right before they went to bed. Each interval

The dynamics of SM and OM use

To test the hypotheses and questions on SM use, a set of competing models were compared. The full model predicts the SM use of an individual i at a time point t (i.e., SMi,t) using: (1) the autoregressive lag 1, lag 2, and lag 3 feedback effects of SM use (i.e., SMi,t−1, SMi,t−2, and SMi,t−3), (2) the autoregressive lag 1, lag 2, and lag 3 feedback effects of OM use (i.e., OMi,t−1, OMi,t−2, and OMi,t−3), (3) the four categories of needs at time t, (4) their interactions with solitude at time t,

Discussion

This study extends U&G theory to account for the dynamic changes of media uses and gratifications in the theoretical framework of dynamic motivational activation. It specifies dynamic uses and gratifications of SM and OM in the everyday lives of college students. First, the study tests and quantifies reciprocal causal relationships between needs, SM and OM use, and gratifications, as well as their self-sustaining feedback effects. Specifying these effects helps more accurately estimate the

Acknowledgement

This work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation (Grant No. SES 0818277 to the first author).

References (48)

  • M. Arellano et al.

    Some tests of specification for panel data: Monte Carlo evidence and an application to employment equations

    Review of Economic Studies

    (1991)
  • B.H. Baltagi

    Econometric analysis of panel data

    (2008)
  • G.M. Boal-Palheiros et al.

    Listening to music at home and at school

    British Journal of Music Education

    (2001)
  • Burke, M., Marlow, C., & Lento, T. (2009). Feed me: Motivating newcomer contribution in social networking sites. In...
  • J.R. Busemeyer et al.

    Cognitive modeling

    (2010)
  • G. Buzsàki

    Rhythms of the brain

    (2006)
  • S. Cohen et al.

    Positive events and social supports as buffers of life change stress

    Journal of Applied Social Psychology

    (1983)
  • S. Cohen et al.

    Measuring the functional components of social support

  • M. Cooke et al.

    Web 2.0, social networks and the future of market research

    International Journal of Market Research

    (2008)
  • A. Dunne et al.

    Young people’s use of online social networking sites: A uses and gratifications perspective

    Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing

    (2010)
  • N.B. Ellison et al.

    The benefits of Facebook “friends”: Social capital and college students’ use of online social network sites

    Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication

    (2007)
  • E. Katz et al.

    Uses and gratifications research

    Public Opinion Quarterly

    (1973)
  • E. Katz et al.

    On the use of the mass media for important things

    American Sociological Review

    (1973)
  • R. Kubey et al.

    Experience sampling method applications to communication research questions

    Journal of Communication

    (1996)
  • Cited by (0)

    View full text