UConn Professor Gets Some Answers About Social Media Addiction

STORRS, CT – A University of Connecticut faculty member has reached a conclusion about social media addiction — the answer seems to lie not with quantity of postings but whether people post more on weekends than weekdays.

UConn operations and information management professor Xue Bai and two colleagues revealed the findings in a newly published study in the journal "Information & Management" titled, “Weekdays or weekends: Exploring the impacts of microblog posting patterns on gratification and addiction.”

Their findings are based on in-depth study of the habits and responses of "a diverse group of 308 microbloggers."

“We found some very surprising results,” Bai said. “It has always been the belief that ‘heavy users’ were most likely to become addicted, but we found there is a stark difference in the types of users and why they’re communicating online."

Some of the other conclusions are:

• Some people are simply seeking information and they seem the least at risk of addiction
• Others are looking for happiness, fulfillment, or a sense of belonging that is missing in other aspects of their lives, and that is the most concerning

The study was funded by the National Science Foundation of China and the MOE Project of Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at Universities of China.

See more about the study on the UConn Today website.

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