Facebook's vicious cycle: Regularly using social media causes people to get stressed which then fuels addiction to the sites

Author: Ian Randall

• Experts studied the behaviours and stress responses of 444 Facebook users
• When it stresses them, more frequent users are less likely to log off Facebook
• Instead they switch to a different kind of activity on the social networking site
• This prolongs their time on social media and increases the risk of addiction

Regular use of social media sites like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook can cause huge amounts of stress which, scientists say, can fuel addiction to the sites. 

Social networking platforms are known to generate so-called 'technostress' among users.

This is not enough to make users ditch the site, but often just makes users use the site in a slightly different way instead.

If this next activity causes more stress, the person again just flips to another social media action,browsing the news feed, messaging etc. 

This vicious circle then raises the risk of these people becoming embroiled in an internet web and becoming addicted.  

IT and management expert Monideepa Tarafdar of the Lancaster University and colleagues examined the habits of 444 Facebook users.

They looked at various forms of technostress that can be caused through the use of social media — including the feeling that the sites were invading users' lives, that users were receiving too much information and that the site was always changing. 
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Alongside this, the team also explored two different principle approaches to handling technostress from social networking.

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