Problematic Attachment to Social Media: Five Behavioural Archetypes

Abstract

Today, social media play an important role in people’s daily lives. Many people use social media to satisfy their personal and social needs, such as enhancing self-image, acquiring self-esteem, and gaining popularity. However, when social media are used obsessively and excessively, behavioural addiction symptoms can occur, leading to negative impacts on one’s life, which is defined as a problematic attachment to social media. Research suggests that tools can be provided to assist the change of problematic attachment behaviour, but it remains unclear how such tools should be designed and personalised to meet individual needs and profiles. This study makes the first attempt to tackle this problem by developing five behavioural archetypes, characterising how social media users differ in their problematic attachments to them. The archetypes are meant to facilitate effective ideation, creativity, and communication during the design process and helping the elicitation and customisation of the variability in the requirements and design of behaviour change tools for combatting problematic usage of social media. This was achieved by using a four-phase qualitative study where the diary study method was considered at the initial stage, and also the refinement and confirmation stage, to enhance ecological validity.

Problematic social media use and mental health (depression, anxiety, and insomnia) among Lebanese adults: Any mediating effect of stress?

“…64 Recent studies confirmed that anxiety symptoms can be triggered by a poor Internet connection, difficulty replying back to messages or unpleasant, and boring SM content. 65 The findings of this study highlight that insomnia is significantly associated with higher anxiety, in line with the results of another…”

Combating Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) on Social Media: The FoMO-R Method

“…Researchers have recently begun to explore the negative consequences of FoMO that are faced by social media users. FoMO is a main type of problematic attachment to social media, and is associated with a range of negative life experiences and feelings, such as a lack of sleep, reduced life competency, emotional tension, negative effects on physical well-being, anxiety and a lack of emotional control [ 3 , 4 ]. Despite indicators of the effect of FoMO on users’ well-being, guidance and tools that allow people to manage it are still not available.…”

Overwhelmed by Technostress? Sensitive Archetypes and Effects in Times of Forced Digitalization

“…There may be types of behavior in the use of social networks that serve as conditioning factors in suffering from different levels of technostress and suffering negative consequences at different levels. There is a typology that, even though it was developed in the context of the problematic use of social networks, establishes five archetypes of user behavior [ 63 ]. They are based on the internal characteristics of the users, emotions, and take into account the psychological states experienced in the participation in social networks and whose characteristics could also allow to classify users of less intensity (not problematic).…”

“…They are based on the internal characteristics of the users, emotions, and take into account the psychological states experienced in the participation in social networks and whose characteristics could also allow to classify users of less intensity (not problematic). A brief description of the behavioral archetypes is the following [ 63 ]: Archetype Secure: likes to feel assured and social media helps to maintain the feeling of security by building successful relationships that increase their social presence and connectedness. Archetype Intimate: has a fear of missing out and likes friends expressing interest and providing emotional responses.…”