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Rutgers faculty members investigate social media, stress levels

Photo Illustration | Researchers in the Department of Communication find there is no correlation between social media use and stress, but instead a relationship between stress and other people’s life events. – Photo by Naaz Modan

Ever since social networking sites became widely popular in the mid-2000s, many claimed digital technology use leads to higher stress. But a new study conducted by faculty members in the Department of Communication found this might not be the case.

The study released findings on social media and stress in a report titled “Social Media and the Cost of Caring,” co-authored by Keith Hampton, associate professor, Weixu Lu, graduate fellow, and Inyoung Shin, doctoral fellow in the Department of Communication.

According to the report, the study was conducted in the fall of 2013, with a Pew Research Center survey of 1,801 American adults. 

The report said the random dial sample participants were asked 10 questions assessing whether their lives were stressful. All responses were standardized with the Perceived Stress Scale, the team’s established measure of stress. 

The team found no direct relationship between stress and social network use.

“What we’re trying to say is that there’s no direct link between social media use and stress,” Lu said. “We actually found a link between stress and awareness of other people’s life events.”

Although the study showed social media users do not have higher stress than non-users, social network use might increase awareness of stressful events in the lives of others. 

Shin said this increased awareness is linked with higher stress.

Called “the cost of caring” by the Pew report, Shin said this higher stress due to awareness is associated with social technologies, but not directly linked. 

“We found this phenomenon [about] people [who know] some horrible event [that] happened to other people because of social media,” she said. “Even if it did not happen to them, they feel some kind of stress because [they know about] this horrible event.

Shin said women exhibit a higher cost of caring than men simply because females tend to care more about the lives of others. She said empathy is a female characteristic.

According to the report, those who exhibit more stress are the same ones whose digital technology use facilitates a greater awareness of other people’s stressful life events. 

This finding suggests stress can be contagious, and social media can act as an indirect medium of transmission.

Lu said many previous psychological studies have also shown that knowledge of stress in the lives of others can contribute to one’s own stress. 

“Awareness of other people’s stressful life events is actually a huge contributor to psychological stress for both women and men,” he said.

Although the study shows women in general are more likely to exhibit stress from information they obtain through social media, Lu said women who use digital technologies typically have less stress than those who do not. 

This could be attributed to how women often use technology to maintain relationships with others, while men use social media for professional networking, said Sharon Stoerger, director of the Information Technology and Informatics program at Rutgers.

“Sending an email message ... or posting a Tweet on Twitter allows women to interact with small or large groups of people they know and trust,” she said. “This form of low-demand sharing may help women cope with situations that they encounter in life.”

She observed this gender difference is noticeable on sites such as LinkedIn or Pinterest.

Stoerger said understanding gender differences with social media use is important because it allows users and companies to understand why certain technologies are adopted. 

“Knowing these details can help us make sense of the technology, the ways in which people have integrated these tools into their daily lives and the impact [of this move] into online spaces on society as a whole,” she said.

Stoerger also said the findings might lead relevant high-stress level user groups to develop ways to minimize the stress through future designs or use of the technology. 

Lu, Shin and Stoerger all said the study has empirical data that helps to discover the actual impact technologies have on stress levels, as opposed to simply accepting what is rumored to be true. 

“We have the access to a large, nationally representative data,” Lu said. “This is a very good opportunity for us to test the relationship between social media use and psychological well-being on a larger scale.”


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