![]() ![]() Understanding the reasons for social media distraction can help to increase users’ agency to deal with unwanted social media distractions. Given these negative consequences, it is important to understand users’ underlying reasons for social media distraction. By drawing away users’ attention, distractions take up limited cognitive resources. ![]() Previous studies on multitasking have consistently demonstrated negative effects of distraction on performance ( Jeong and Hwang, 2016), on academic performance among students ( Junco and Cotten, 2012 Giunchiglia et al., 2018) and on well-being (e.g., Brooks, 2015). Due to especially mobile access to social media, distractions by social media can occur frequently. Social media distraction refers to the process by which social media cues draw individuals’ attention away from a task that they originally pursued (e.g., working). As a consequence, users can permanently be distracted by social media. Internet and smartphones enable users to be permanently online and permanently connected ( Vorderer et al., 2018). This paper contributes to the understanding of social media use by revealing insights into social media distraction from the user perspective. Strategies used to reduce distractions mostly involved reducing external distractions (e.g., silencing the device). Additionally, typical distraction situations are non-interactive situations (e.g., watching movies, facing unpleasant tasks). For social distraction, affiliation motive and fear of missing out (FoMO) are significant predictors, while for task-related distraction, self-regulatory capabilities (self-control, problematic social media use) and FoMO are significant predictors. We find individual differences in these reasons for distraction. The results reveal two reasons for social media distraction: social (e.g., staying connected and being available) and task-related distraction (e.g., not wanting to pursue a task). The method adopted is a quantitative online survey ( N = 329) with a demographically diverse sample. We examine the phenomenon of social media distraction by identifying reasons for, situations of, and strategies against social media distraction. However, an understanding of why users get distracted by social media is still lacking. Social media is a major source of distraction and thus can hinder users from successfully fulfilling certain tasks by tempting them to use social media instead. Economic and Consumer Psychology, Department of Computer Science and Applied Cognitive Science, University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |