The purpose of this study is to examine whether supportive interactions on social networking sites mediate the influence of SNS use and the number of SNS friends on perceived social support, affect, sense of community, and life satisfaction. Employing momentary sampling, the current study also looked at the relationship between supportive interaction and immediate affect after the interaction over a period of 5 days. An analysis of 339 adult participants revealed a positive relationship between supportive interaction and positive affect after the interaction. A path model revealed positive associations among the number of SNS friends, supportive interactions, affect, perceived social support, sense of community, and life satisfaction. Implications for the research of online social networking and social support are discussed.
Social networking today is one of the most popular activities on the Internet. A recent report found that visiting social networking sites (SNSs) is the most frequent online activity of Internet users (comScore., 2011). Over 90% of adult users in the US have visited social media (Simmons, 2011). On average, social networking accounts for one of every 6 minutes that people spend online (comScore, 2011).
Considerable scholarly attention has focused on the psychological outcomes of online social networking, but the results have been inconsistent. Although researchers have studied various psychological outcomes (Burke et al., 2010, Ellison et al., 2007, Kim and Lee, 2011, Steinfield et al., 2008, Valenzuela et al., 2009 and Valkenburg et al., 2006), major indicators of online social networking (i.e., number of SNS friend, the amount of social networking) often failed to predict positive outcomes (Kalpidou et al., 2011, Kim and Lee, 2011, Klingensmith, 2010, Valenzuela et al., 2009 and Vitak et al., 2011). Inconsistent findings suggest two possibilities: First, prior online social networking studies have focused on varying predictors of psychological outcomes, some of which may be more valid than others. Second, there may be a third variable that either mediates or moderates the relationships between the predictors and the outcomes.
The current study explores one possible mechanism through which peoples’ online social networking leads to psychological outcomes. Specifically, this study proposes that the amount of supportive interaction mediates the relationship between general SNS use and users’ psychological states. The traditional social network literature also highlights the importance of the quality of interaction among members in a network (Pinquart & Sörensen, 2000) and the perception of available social support from other members (Young, 2006). Pursuing this argument, the current study proposes several mediating variables that include supportive interaction, affect, and perceived social support.
The present study focuses on two psychological outcomes, sense of community and life satisfaction, as they appear frequently in online communication and social network literature (Kim and Lee, 2011, Klingensmith, 2010, Köbler et al., 2010 and Young, 2006). Using a momentary sampling technique, which allows an examination of affect immediately after a behavior, this study first examines the direct relationship between the amount of supportive interaction and the positive affect following that interaction for five days. Secondly, the study uses a path model to explore the possible mechanism through which online social networking can lead to a greater sense of community and life satisfaction. By doing both, we expect to contribute to a better understanding of the positive outcomes of online social networking and clarify the issues related to mixed findings in the existing SNS literature.
