Sharing events and gratification: Do people enjoy their lives more when they share their events on social media?

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Sharing events and gratification:

Do people enjoy their lives more when they share their events on social media?

Alba Johnsen

Submitted as a Cand.psychol. thesis at The Department of Psychology

University of Oslo

May 2021

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III

Sharing events and gratification:

Do people enjoy their lives more when they share

their events on social media?

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IV

2021

Do people enjoy their lives more when they share their events on social media?

Alba Johnsen

Supervisor: Thomas Schubert

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Abstract

Author: Alba Johnsen.

Title: Do people enjoy their lives more when they share their events on social media?

Supervisors: Professor, Dr. psychol. Thomas Schubert.

Objective: The objective of the present study is to identify whether there is an association between sharing events on social media and enjoyment. When it comes to enjoyment, we can assume this term as a hedonic (short-time) or eudaimonic (long-time) feeling. Attending a concert was considered as a tool to cluster people into two different groups; those who were live on social media or shared their event on social media, and those who did not share any media while they were at the concert. Moreover, the project examined the effect of different factors, such as personality type, self-esteem and the motivation behind social media usage.

Method: The research questions and hypotheses were explored using quantitative methods, data was collected through an online survey with 155 participants. Data were mainly analyzed using general linear model (GLM) and Linear regression. Results: Results from a general linear model of 153 participants demonstrated that the concert enjoyment rate

between those who did and those who did not share any media was not statistically different.

In addition, the univariate test results showed that there was a statistically significant difference of short-time and meaningful feelings between those who shared and those who did not share the event on social media. Among the six independent uses and gratification variables, escapism had the greatest impact on social media usage. Furthermore, of the five independent personality variables that were studied, agreeableness affected social media usage the most. Based on the between-subject effects tests (Table-13), the results

demonstrated that self-esteem was not a significant predictor of perceived enjoyment. Only how often people use social media itself was a predictor of enjoyment which is not

surprising.

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VI

Acknowledgments

Throughout the preparation of this thesis, I received considerable support and assistance. I would like to begin by thanking my supervisor Thomas Schubert, Professor at the

Department of Psychology at the University of Oslo. He has provided me with great

motivation and advice through this thesis. He spent a lot of time instructing me about writing an article, researching literature and collecting data.

Special thanks are given to the participants of this study for making the research possible.

Finally, I want to thank my family for their continuous love and support. They always inspire me to pursue my dreams and aspirations. You are always there for me. I couldn’t have completed my dissertation without your support.

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VII

Content

Introduction... 1

Background ... 3

Social Networks ... 3

Uses and Gratification ... 4

Perceived enjoyment ... 5

Hedonic and Eudaimonic happiness ... 7

Self-esteem ... 8

Personality ... 9

Aims of the Study ... 10

Hypotheses and Questions ... 11

Material and methods ... 13

Participants ... 13

Measures... 13

Ethical Consideration ... 16

Results... 17

Descriptive Analysis ... 17

Frequencies... 17

Internal Consistency Reliability ... 17

Results from General Linear Model ... 18

Results from Linear Regression ... 22

Results from General Linear Model ... 27

Discussion ... 28

Limitations ... 35

Future Work ... 36

Conclusion ... 36

References... 38

Appendix... 48

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VIII

List of tables

Table 1 Between-Subjects Factors ... 18

Table 2 Estimates ... 19

Table 3 Pairwise Comparison ... 20

Table 4 Coefficients ... 22

Table 13 Tests of Between-Subjects Effects ... 27

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1 Introduction

With the evolution of mobile camera technology and the growth of social media, online photo sharing has become a growing phenomenon (Sundar, Oeldorf-Hirsch & Shyam, 2016).

Social media have become omnipresent, with monthly active users expected to reach 3.02 billion active users by 2021(Chen & Cheung, 2019). Customers now have the ability to share their opinions, thoughts and experiences with their friends through social media (Smith &

Kawasaki, 2011). The images users post on social media help to tell their story, build their identity and can even reveal more in-depth information about the user's life and character.

For example, the frequency of displaying romantic selfies seems to correspond to aspects of love toward romantic partners (Sabiniewicz, Borkowska, Serafińska & Sorokowski, 2017).

Recently, more and more studies on information systems have adopted the theory of uses and gratification (U&G) to examine user behaviour in the context of social media (Gan & Wang, 2015). The theory of uses and gratification is one of the most successful theoretical

frameworks for examining why individuals use social networking sites (SNSs). A principal tenet of this theory is that the usage of media is selective and driven by a rational self- awareness of people's own needs and these needs are expected to be addressed through particular types of media and content. (Katz, Blumler & Gurevitch, 1974). Needs are a combination of psychological status, sociological factors, and environmental situations (Katz, Haas, & Gurevitch, 1973) that motivate media consumption or exposure.

Gratifications are the “perceived fulfilment” of the needs via media use (Palmgreen, 1984).

Based on the uses and gratification theory, which is actually related to the needs and motivations behind using social media, two principle motivations must be explained; the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. Intrinsic motivation refers to behaviour that is basically satisfying or enjoyable (Legault, 2016). Intrinsic motivation is non-structural in nature, meaning that intrinsically motivated action does not depend on any separable outcome from the behavior itself. Instead, the means and end are one and similar. Conversely, extrinsic motivation refers to the performance of a behaviour which is basically subordinated to the achievement of a result which is separable from the action itself. In other words, extrinsic motivation is instrumental in nature. It is carried out for the purpose of achieving another result (Legault, 2016).

As an important intrinsic motivator, enjoyment is defined as “Enjoyment is a positive affective state that occurs when a person engages in an experience or activity that satisfies a

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desire, goal, or need, including but not limited to the need for pleasure, meaning, security, safety, sustenance, esteem, belongingness, or love.” (Michalos, 2014, p.1900). Despite Sminth’s explanation of enjoyment, it is still unclear whether enjoyment is more like a short- term feeling (hedonic) or whether positive because it is meaningful and identity- involving (eudaimonic). It seems that, there should be a more specific definition of what enjoyment actually is. To investigate this question for social media is one of the goals of this thesis.

Hedonic and eudaimonic views of happiness can be considered as two aspects of happiness.

This distinction has been around for a long time and has also been supported by empirical evidence (Armbrecht & Andersson, 2020). Aristippus (fourth century BC) claimed that pleasant experiences and the avoidance of pain are the sources of happiness. This is now referred to as hedonic happiness and has been linked to a “positive affect” (Diener, 1984). In positive psychology, the hedonic is often the opposite of eudaimonia. A number of

definitions and operationalization have been proposed for eudaimonia. For instance, the classic philosophical understanding of eudaimonia did not refer to a subjective experiential state, but rather to what was worth continuing in life (Huta & Waterman, 2013). In

psychology, Ryan et al. (2008) assimilated eudaimonia to self-determination and a way of life centered on what is intrinsically valuable to human beings (Ryan, Huta, & Deci, 2008).

Nevertheless, many activities (e.g., playing video games) could be considered intrinsically motivating, but not necessarily eudaimonic (Mekler & Hornbæk, 2016). Waterman et al.

(2006) distinguished hedonic enjoyment and “personal expressiveness” (i.e., eudaimonia) (Waterman, Schwartz & Conti, 2006). Many psychologists postulated that there is a distinctive set of subjective experiences which accompany the continuation of eudaimonia, and that they are distinguishable from hedonic experiences (Huta &Waterman, 2013). One of those experiential aspects on which most researchers are in agreement is meaning

(Baumeister, Vohs, Aaker & Garbinsky, 2013). Peterson et al. argue that both pleasure and meaning contribute independently to well-being. Given that eudaimonia involves efforts to align one’s actions with one’s values, it can promote a feeling that those actions have meaning (Peterson, Park & Seligman, 2005). In fact, Huta and Ryan, (2009) have found meaning to be strongly related to eudaimonia (Huta &Ryan, 2009). When it comes to gratification and the reason people use social media, it is obvious that one of the most

important factors of using social media is enjoyment, but there is no specific proof as to what kind of feelings are related to uses and gratification. The commonly prevailing public

impression is that social media use is primarily driven by hedonic feeling alone. The goal of the present work is to provide initial evidence for whether the enjoyment which comes from social media usage is a part of hedonia or eudaimonia.

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Over the past century, there has been a dramatic increase in sharing photos on social media, in spite of the recent rise in social media usage, many questions remain unanswered specially when it comes to photo-sharing.

How people enjoy, behave and have different habits is caused by various reasons. Some of these reasons include influence by family and friends, type of personality and self-esteem.

Self-esteem is assumed to play an important role in people’s behavior because it is partly determined by social comparisons and refers to the global feeling of self-worth, self- acceptance, and virtue (Coopersmith, 1967; Crocker, 1989; Rosenberg, 1965). In the same way, personality traits represent the fundamental characteristics that influence human

behaviour. Personal features tend to contribute to or predict the tendency to become addicted to chemical or behavioral addictions (Grant, Potenza, Weinstein & Gorelick, 2010). To focus on the core of the study which is about sharing photos on social media and enjoyment, it is worthwhile to start with the definition of each variable. A general definition of social media which has been gaining prevalence in recent years will help us know more about the

important role of social network sites on how enjoyment is defined. Moreover, the factors such as personality type, level of self-esteem and people’s motivations of using social media may affect the level of enjoyment.

1.1 Background

1.1.1 Social Networks

Online content providers have increasingly integrated technology tools designed to enable users to voice their views on specific media content and related issues. This includes sharing buttons on social media. People push the buttons to share media content they consider important or interesting, and the system generates the number of times the content has been shared (Lee-Won, 2016).

Logging on to social network sites has become a daily routine for many people. Around one in every 3-min spent online is dedicated to social networking sites and messaging, with adults engaging in internet use for about 1 h and 50 min each day (Global Web Index, 2016).

In the US, approximately three out of four adults (76%) use social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (Pew Research Center, 2015).

A study of Twitter users and their mobile and non-mobile usage conducted by Han et al.

(2015), posits that users are attracted to the social networking sites to meet their social connection needs and that the sense of social presence that the social networking sites

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generates plays a significant role in meeting these needs (Han, Min &Lee, 2015).

1.1.2 Uses and Gratification

Thanks to the latest technological innovations and the high availability of camera phones, taking pictures has become a daily and pervasive activity for millions of people (Diehl, Zauberman & Barasch, 2016). The uses and gratifications theory (U&G) is one of the most effective theoretical frameworks for examining why people use social networking sites (Bae, 2018). In uses and gratifications theory, social presence on the social networking sites generate the gratifications of people’s needs for the social connection which in turn

influence continuous use (Kim, Lee, & Contractor, 2019). Uses and gratifications theory is categorized into different types and consists of five general categories of needs: “Cognitive (information), emotional (entertainment), social (connection), personal integrative, and escape motives” (Katz et al., 1973). In some studies, hedonic gratifications, utilitarian gratifications (achievement), and social gratifications (social interaction and social presence) have been chosen (Li, Liu, Xu, Heikkilä & Heijden, 2015), while other studies focused on information gratification, convenience gratification, entertainment gratification, escapism gratification and satisfaction gratification. Cognitive gratification, affective gratifications, self-portrayal gratification are also counted as a part of uses and gratifications category.

Understanding why people use social media gives an idea of the nature of certain social networking behaviours. The motivations are clarified by asking why users get involved in social media and what gratifications they get out of using it (Ruggiero, 2000). By choosing content that will later be posted on social media, users continuously preoccupy themselves with impression-management. This is most probably inspired by the feeling of positive online self-presentation, which is in turn the result of the associated positive feedback users have obtained through content sharing (Metzler & Scheithauer, 2017).

In addition, data from Oeldorf-Hirsch et al., (2016) support the notion that social and self- representation needs are met by sharing photos online. These authors identified four categories of rewards: Firstly, participants expressed a desire to research, highlight and share their personal experiences. Secondly, technology, such as the ease with which photos can be shared, has been an important factor in motivating people to share photos online.

Lastly, social links (maintaining close and intimate relationships) and reaching out (interacting with a broad public) were the third and fourth specified gratifications, respectively (Oeldorf-Hirsch et al., 2016). A study conducted by Oh and Syn (2015)

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investigated what motivates social media users to share their personal experiences, insights, and social support with others who are anonymous. Findings from this study indicate that enjoyment, self-efficacy, learning, personal gain, altruism, empathy, social engagement, community concern, reciprocity, and reputation have an influence on encouraging users to share information to some extent and strongly correlate with one another (Oh & Syn, 2015).

The main purpose of the study conducted by Kim and Kim (2019) was to explore which elements of users’ perceived gratifications and technology features are related to changes in the level of usage of Facebook and Instagram over the past three months. Results illustrates that participants who were more gratified with entertainment and need for recognition facets and those who have positive viewpoint toward Facebook’s recommendation algorithm features were more likely to point out that they have increased the usage of the platform throughout the past three months. Meanwhile, participants who were pleased with the browsing aspect of gratifications and those participants who have positive viewpoint toward levels of openness on Instagram tended to state that they have increasingly used the platform throughout the past three months (Kim & Kim, 2019). Despite the unique features and increasing prominence of taking and sharing photos, very little work has examined its psychological consequences.

1.1.3 Perceived Enjoyment

Nowadays, users treat mobile service not only as a business or working tool, but also as a tool to enjoy themselves. Perceived enjoyment (PEN) is described as “the degree to which the activity of using technology is perceived to be enjoyable in its own right apart from any performance consequences that may be anticipated” (Davis et al., 1992, p.1113).

Enjoyment is one of the self-motivated and intrinsic factors that allow people to feel happy and excited when doing certain actions even without receiving external or palpable

compensation (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Enjoyment is a major desire, bringing people to engage in a variety of leisure activities (Hills, Argyle & Reeves, 2000). 

Based on a study by Heijden (2004), enjoyment is the extent to which a person derives fun from using a hedonic information system, thus, in a social media environment enjoyment is an important motivation for the adoption of technology (Van Der Heijden, 2004). Pittman and Reich (2016) found out that the use of image-based social media is related to increased happiness and satisfaction with life (Pittman & Reich 2016). In the literature, enjoyment has been considered as a positive hedonic experience that can lead to the willingness to accept user satisfaction (Shiau & Luo, 2013) greater engagement with social networking sites

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(Turel & Serenko, 2012), and intention for continued use (Sun, Liu, Peng, Dong & Barnes, 2013). Social media users share information to entertain, amuse themselves, or to kill time (Hsu & Lin, 2008; Haase & Young, 2010). They may also consider taking part in social media as a hobby, helpful in finding information and sharing it with others (Lin & Lu, 2011).

From vacations and holidays to fun experiences, people often share their experiences with those who were not there. Because experiences define people as individuals and impact their life enjoyment of living (Carter and Gilovich, 2012; Van Boven and Gilovich, 2003),

sharing them with other people benefits them in various ways. For example, engaging in these sharing behaviors with others who were not there may stimulate people’s mood and improve their sense of meaning (Lambert, Gwinn, Baumeister, Strachman, Washburn, Gable

& Fincham, 2012; Reis, Smith, Carmichael, Caprariello, Tsai, Rodrigues & Maniaci, 2010).

A project conducted by Oliveira (2020) shows that perceived enjoyment was the major motive to explain why travelers share their travel experiences on Facebook; more than any other reason, sharing travel content is perceived to be delightful and pleasing. The study also found that social media users involved in sharing travel experiences used social media for personally meaningful and rewarding purposes (internalization and identification). If users do not perceive sharing travel experiences on social media as helpful in reaching their goals, sharing travel experiences may not be pursued (Oliveira, Araujo & Tam, 2020).

How does taking photos increases the enjoyment of experiences? The main goal of the study conducted by Barasch et al. (2018), was to examine the effect of photo-taking on enjoyment in an extended, real-life experience during which people often take photos. Results show that individuals who took photos during the bus tour enjoyed their experience more than individuals who did not take photos. Moreover, results show that, relative to not taking photos, photo-taking can enhance the enjoyment of positive experiences, and does so because photo-taking elevates engagement (Barasch, Zauberman & Diehl, 2018). Lin and Lu (2011) observed that people are attracted to use social networking sites in order to obtain perceived benefits of self-enjoyment and usefulness as well as network connectivity (Lin &, Lu 2011). A study conducted by Raghunathan and Corfman (2006) shows that enjoyment from sharing stimuli depends on consumers’ perceived interpersonal agreements about the shared stimuli. Thus, the congruence of opinions increases and the incongruence of opinions decreases the enjoyment of the shared experience (Raghunathan & Corfman, 2006). Finally, the simple fact of being with other people may improve the enjoyment of shared experience (e.g., Di Tommaso & Spinner, 1993; Saklofske & Yackulic, 1989).

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To the best of our knowledge, only few prior studies have examined how the salience of a sharing goal might impact enjoyment.

1.1.4 Hedonic and Eudaimonic Feeling

The difference between hedonia and eudaimonia has been an issue of discussion among psychologists for decades (Ryff, 1989). The concept of hedonia suggests that maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain is the most important pathway to happiness (Ryan & Deci, 2000). It consists of three constructions: emotional responses (high positive effect and absence of or low negative effect), domain satisfactions (e.g. occupational satisfaction) and global judgements on life satisfaction (Diener, Ed, Suh, Eunkook, Lucas, Richard, Smith, Heidi, 1999); these aspects may be divided into narrower categories reflecting a general dispositional propensity or a more temporary state reaction (Tenney, Poole &Diener, 2016).

The eudaimonic aspect argues that true happiness involves identifying one’s virtues,

cultivating them, and living in alignment with them. Ryff (1989) encompasses six aspects of this positive functioning: “purpose in life, personal growth, self-acceptance, positive

relationships, environmental mastery, and autonomy” (Ryff, 1989).

Definitions of eudaimonic contents have varied more widely. Nevertheless, in a

comprehensive review of psychological definitions of eudaimonia, Huta and Waterman (2013) found that there are four aspects to most or all of the definitions:

“meaning/value/relevance to a broader context, personal growth/self-realization/maturity, excellence/ethics/quality, and authenticity/autonomy/integration” (Huta & Waterman, 2013). These variables are related to specified mind sets, consisting of a balance of focusing on the self and others, a balance of current and future focus, a tendency to allow oneself to be guided by abstract and global concepts, and a focus on construction and building what one values and envisions. A higher degree of eudaimonia exists if all these aspects are combined (Reinecke, 2016). Activities which induce eudaimonic feeling will induce

hedonic feeling as well and, there is no activity that induce only eudaimonic feeling and not hedonic feeling (Armbrecht & Andersson, 2020).

A study conducted by Guido et al. (2017) shows that frequent users of social media have strong and spontaneous hedonic responses to social media cues, which in turn makes it difficult to resist the temptations of social media. Results demonstrated that frequent users of social media have shown more favorable emotional reactions in response to social media (vs. control) cues, while the affective reactions of less frequent social media users did not differ between social media and control cues. In addition, the spontaneous hedonic

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responses to social media (vs. control) cues were linked to self-reported cravings to use social media and partially explained the link between the social media usage and social media cravings. These results suggest that spontaneous hedonistic reactions from frequent social media users in response to social media cues might contribute to their difficulties in resisting desires to use social media (Koningsbruggen, Hartmann, Eden, & Veling, 2017).

A recent representive survey in the United States by Raney et al. (2018) investigated the sources of eudaimonic content and found that people most frequently reported to be “moved, touched or inspired” by music (90.5%), movies (86.9%), television (80.2%), and also social media (53%) (Raney, Bowles, Oliver, Dale, Jones & Cox, 2018).

1.1.5 Self-esteem

The popularity of social media has prompted researchers to examine the effect of psychological variables on the use of social media, one being self-esteem. “Self-esteem refers to the global feeling of self-worth or adequacy as a person, or generalized feelings of self-acceptance, goodness, and self-report” (Coopersmith, 1967; Crocker, 1989; Rosenberg, 1965; Lyubomirsky, Tkach & DiMatteo, 2005, p.366). Previous studies suggested self- esteem influenced how people use social media (Andreassen, Pallesen, Griffiths, 2017;

Barker, 2009; Błachnio, Przepiorka, Rudnicka, 2016; Ehrenberg, Juckes, White & Walsh, 2008; Wang, Jackson, Zhang & Su, 2012). People with high self-esteem were more

motivated to use social networking sites to connect with peer group (Barker, 2009) and were more likely to comment on the profile photos of others (Wang et al., 2012). People with low self-esteem tend to spend much more time using instant messaging (IM), had a higher tendency to be addicted to instant messaging (Ehrenberg, 2008), and had a higher dependency on Facebook (Armbrecht & Andersson, 2020; Błachnio et al, 2016).

A study conducted by Mehdizadeh (2010) shows that having lower self-esteem is related to greater online activity. Results demonstrated a significant negative correlation between self- esteem and activity on Facebook. Specifically, individuals who scored lower on the

Rosenberg self-esteem scale spent a greater amount of time spent on Facebook per session and a greater number of Facebook logins per day. In accordance with this notion, a

significant negative correlation was found between the self-esteem of participant and the self-promotion of profile photo. In this case, profile photos could have been chosen or enhanced to cover up undesirable features by individuals with low self-esteem in order to allow the actualization of their hoped-for potential selves (Mehdizadeh, 2010).

Valkenburg et al. (2017) found that the initial social networking sites used by adolescents had no significant influence on their social self-esteem in subsequent years. In contrast, their

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initial social self-esteem has always affected their use of social networking sites in subsequent years (Valkenburg, Koutamanis &Vossen, 2017). Results from a study conducted by Andreassen et al. (2017) illustrated that lower age, being single, being a student, lower level of education, lower wage, lower level of self-esteem, and narcissism were related to higher outcomes on the Media Addiction Scale (Andreassen et al., 2017).

1.1.6 Personality

Social network sites enable people to be in touch and interact more and more. There are many factors that change the way we use social media. Personality traits can be one of these factors. Personality is the fundamental characteristics that affect human behaviour. Personal characteristics have a tendency to contribute to or predict the tendency to become addicted to chemicals or behaviour (Grant et al., 2010). The big five personality traits in common

personality theorizing are “(a) extent of openness to new experience, (b) degree of

conscientiousness, (c) extraversion tendency, (d) degree of agreeableness, and (e) intensity of neuroticism” (Andreassen et al., 2017). “Open individuals are curious, independent, non- traditional, original, brave, highly imaginative, open-minded, intellectual, creative, they like novelty, have broad perspectives, and enjoy differences” (Kayiş, Satici, Yilmaz, Şimşek, Ceyhan & Bakioğlu, 2016, p.35). Findings on the relationship between openness and new experiences vary a lot with academic scholars finding it positive (Rahmani & Lavasani, 2011; Hwang, Choi, Gwak, Jung, Choi, Lee, Lee, Jung & Kim, 2014), negative (Batıgün &

Kilic, 2014; McElroy, Hendrickson, Townsend & DeMarie, 2007; Servidio, 2014; Van Der Aa, Overbeek, Engels & Eijnden 2009) and no significant relationships (Batıgün & Kilic 2011; Andreassen et al., 2013) between openness and the tendency to try out new concepts or experiences. They generally do not stick to one thing. They tend to investigate and experiment with various activities. They get bored easily. Conscientiousness means being planned, conclusive, organized, systematic, careful, abiding by ethical values and laws, and generally working hard (Costa & McCrae, 1992).

Extraversion is defined as an individual’s amount and intensity of social engagement, and illustrate that individual’s ability to act confidently and competitively (McCrae & Costa, 1987). Agreeable individuals prevent both competition and strife (Kayiş et al., 2016).

Agreeable individuals are both patient and clement (McCrae & Costa, 1987). They prevent being bossy and forceful (McCrae & Costa, 1987). Extent of internet use is negatively associated to agreeableness (Randler, Horzum & Vollmer 2014; Servidio, 2014). The tendency of an individual to lose emotional balance is known as neuroticism (McCrae

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&Costa, 1987). Highly neurotic people have a tendency to deal with stressful situations by adopting dysfunctional and defective mechanisms of denial and delay (Carver & Connor- Smith, 2010) or by becoming dependent on dysfunctional or negative behaviors.

Previous studies have shown that people with different levels of extraversion might use various online social network sites in a different way. For example, extraverted individuals generally use instant messaging compared over the other forms of technology (Ehrenberg et al., 2008), and seem more interested in Facebook than Twitter (Hughes, Rowe, Batey & Lee, 2012). Extraversion can be associated with selfie-posting activity for various reasons

(Gosling, Augustine, Vazire, Holtzman & Gaddis 2011). Extroverted people are usually more socially active than introverts (McCrae, 2003). Posting selfies could also work as a display of willingness to keep friends up-to-date about oneself. In addition, extroverted people are often more active users of various online social networking sites than are relatively introverted people (Nadkarni & Hofmann, 2012), so it is probable that they are also more active in selfie-posting.

Eftekhar et al. (2014) found that neuroticism and extraversion predicted more picture uploads. Conscientiousness predicted more self-generated albums and videos, and agreeableness predicted the average number of likes and comments received in profile photos. In addition, the Facebook experience in interaction with the personality factors was found to have an influence on the type of photo-related activities and the level of photo participation of users. The results provide proof that Facebook users with diverse personality traits set up albums and upload photos in different ways (Eftekhar, Fullwood & Morris 2014).

1.2 Aims of the study

Let me start by explain why this topic interested me personally. Personally, I have always wondered why people take pictures or go live on social media when they attend an event.

Isn’t that event enjoyable enough? Is it possible that technology and social media have changed the way people enjoy their lives? This is a comprehensive question that takes lots of research to answer, but in this project, I have decided to focus on some questions regarding enjoyment that seem to be central to it. In particular, I am asking whether those who share photos from events enjoy the events more than those who do not share photos. I have

considered some independent variables such as personality type, self-esteem and motivation in my study for a deeper analysis.

As it seems to be complicated to measure people’s enjoyment, I have decided to measure enjoyment in different ways. It seems to me that concert can be counted as a good example

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of an event where most people tend to take pictures and share them afterwards, or go live.

Note that the data collected before the Covid-19 pandemic reached Norway in March 2020.

So how can enjoyment be measured? Well, I have added four items to my questionnaire which ask people about how much they enjoyed and liked the concert, if they think the concert made them feel better, and if the feeling is long-lasting. I needed to be more specific about enjoyment and sharing photos, that’s why I have used the perceived enjoyment items to find out whether sharing photos can affect level of perceived enjoyment. There are numerous reasons which may impact on the way we enjoy an event. In this project, and based on the literature review above, I have decided to choose personality, self-esteem and uses and gratification to investigate people’s enjoyment in more detail. There are many inventories regarding personality, but “Big Five Personality” was chosen because it is currently the most standard view of personality. In order to investigate whether self-esteem may moderate our social networking sites usage, I chose Rosenberg's 10 item questionnaire that seems to be both useful and concise enough to use in my study. People may have different motivations for sharing their photos on social media. From the different uses and gratifications items, I chose items from Bae (2017), because they are more relevant to my study. Socialization, Convenience, Social support, Information, Entertainment, and Social escapism motivations seem to be good enough to measure the reason of using social media.

To sum up, to the best of my knowledge, no prior work has examined how the salience of a sharing on social media might impact the concept of enjoyment to date. Therefore, based on the above-mentioned arguments, this research attempts to find out how social media can affect people’s level of enjoyment. Moreover, we seek to find out whether there is a difference between happiness and enjoyment of social media usage. Happiness can be

defined as a feeling that one’s life and actions are meaningful, the positive affect experienced as a result can be called eudaimonic feeling. In contrast, enjoyment is a more short-term experience of positive, hedonic experience. Moreover, the project aims to focus on the differences between eudaimonic and hedonic experiences and scrutinize the one related to sharing media on social networks. Besides, focusing on moderators will help clarify more who enjoys more and for what reason?

1.2.1 Hypotheses and Questions

This study will explore a proposed association between sharing events on social media and enjoyment. It is interesting to find out whether social media usage may have any impact on enjoyment or not. When we talk about enjoyment, it can be a bit unclear what type of

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enjoyment we mean. That’s why it is worthwhile to investigate the different enjoyment types such as hedonic and eudaimonic to find out the difference of these emotions when it comes to social media and photo sharing. Moreover, there can be many moderators that affect the impact of social media on enjoyment. The focus of this project is to identify the prevalent motives for using social media in our sample of Non-Norwegian users. Employing U&G theory, the aim is to address the following research hypotheses and questions. Also, previous studies have suggested that People with low self-esteem may be more likely to disclose themselves (e.g., post a selfie) via social media rather than openly displaying their appearance or personality during face-to-face interactions (Barry, Doucette, Loflin, Rivera- Hudson & Herrington, 2015). Thus, it is reasonable to postulate that self-esteem may moderate the social media usage and perceived enjoyment. Besides, it is interesting to find the effect of personality type on motivations, and also to see what personality type tends to use social media more often. Personality type, self-esteem, and motivation type for using social media seem to play a key role in the way we enjoy an event. Thus, in order to find out these answers it is questioned and hypothesized that:

Questions:

Q1. Do people enjoy the concert more when they share their events on social media?

Q2. Do people experience meaningful happiness or short-time enjoyment when they share their events on social media?

Q3. Which motivation has a stronger effect on social media usage?

Q4. How do individuals’ personality traits influence varied motivations for using social media?

Hypotheses:

H1. Sharing events on social media will increase the perceived enjoyment.

H2. Stronger motivation to use social media for sociability will be positively related to higher perceived enjoyment.

H3. Neuroticism will be positively associated with using more social media in comparison with other types of personalities.

H4. For people with low self-esteem, use of social media predicts enjoyment more strongly.

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2 Methods and materials

In this study, I initially planned to recruit participants that attended concerts held in Oslo, in February 2020. All the questionnaires were in Norwegian and the goal was to choose participants who were Norwegian or at least could speak Norwegian. However, due to COVID-19 pandemic, our plans had to be altered, and the English version of survey was conducted through social media.

2.1 Participants

The sample consisted of 155 participants who were recruited through social media, specifically Facebook. Participants had the option to opt-in to be entered in a raffle for a 1000 NOK for their participation. Information regarding demographics such as age, gender, ethnicity, and level of education was also collected. The questionnaire was available online in English. The study was approved by the IRB of the Department of Psychology, University of Oslo. It was conducted using the survey platform Qualtrics. The use of of the survey was anonymous, no identifying information was saved. The email address for the raffle was collected on a separate questionnaire to which the participants were forwarded after filling in the main survey. The two surveys were not linked.

2.2 Procedure and Measures

First, I explained the purpose of the study and obtained the participants’ consent. I then asked them to remember a concert they had attended, and asked several questions about that

particular event. Subsequently, I proceeded by enquiring about the uses and gratifications of social media in general. This also included the enjoyment (eudaimonic and hedonic) of social media in general. Finally, the personality and self-esteem scales were measured.

The following measures were used:

To measure the participants’ level of enjoyment at the concert, I created the following item:

“how much did you enjoy the concert?”. This item was measured with a five-point likert scale, ranging from “I did not enjoy at all (1)” to “I enjoyed it a lot (5)”. I also created 3 items to find out how meaningful the concert was to the participants. These items were mentioned in the following order: Do you think the experience of being at in the concert was meaningful? Do

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you think the experience made you feel better? Do you think the experience has given you a good long lasting feeling?

Perceived Enjoyment: perceived enjoyment was adapted from Gan and Li (2018). All items were measured with a seven-point Likert scale, ranging from “strongly disagree (1)” to

“strongly agree (7)” (Gan & Li, 2018). For example, one of the items was: “Using this mobile social networking service is enjoyable”

Uses and Gratification: Uses and gratification were measured with a seven-point Likert-type scale ranging from (1) definitely false to (7) definitely true. As part of uses and gratification, socialization motivation was measured with three items adapted from Kim et al. (2011).

These elements include a question about whether respondents use social networking sites to talk with people with similar interests and hang out with people they enjoy (Kim, Yoojung, Sohn & Choi 2011). One such item was: “I use social media because I am not alone due to social media sites”. Convenience, social support, and motivation for information were each measured with four items each, adapted from Kim et al. (2011). Items for measuring convenience include questions about whether respondents used social networking sites because they were able to use them at any time and in any place (Kim et al., 2011). To measure social support, items contained a question about whether they used social networking sites to talk about their issues and obtain advice. With respect to information seeking motivation, the elements included a question about whether they have used social networking sites to learn about unknown things. Entertainment motivation is measured with three items, adapted from Papacharissi and Rubin (2000). An example item is whether respondents use social networking sites because it amused them. Escapism motivation is measured with eight items, adapted from Nam (2014). Items included a question about whether they used social networking sites because they could escape from reality.

Self-esteem: Self-esteem was measured by Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965). The scale consisted of 10 questions, 5 positive and 5 negative questions, which are scored on a Likert 5-pointscale. The 5 positive items ranged from “strongly disagree” to

“strongly agree” and scoring from 1 to 5; the 5 negative items were reverse scored. The higher the total score, the higher the self-esteem level.

Big Five Personality: The Big Five Inventory-10 (Rammstedt & John, 2007) is an

abbreviated version of the BFI-44. It consisted of two items per scale, representing both the high and low poles of each factor. The response format was identical to the full BFI,

although the instructions were shortened. Items were selected based on their item-total

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correlations with the full BFI scales, as well as their factor loadings in analyses of all 44 items. Respondents indicate the extent to which they agree or disagree with each statement on a 5-point, Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (disagree strongly) to 5 (agree strongly).

Sharing events on social media: I created several items to measure how much the participants enjoyed and liked the concert they were asked about initially. Moreover, some items were regarding social media usage. For instance; how much they use social media? did they share their photos on social media? etc.

Hedonic and eudaimonic experience: These items were created in order to differentiate between long-term and short-term happiness (enjoyment). Respondents indicate the extent to which they agree or disagree with each statement on a 5-point, Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (disagree strongly) to 5 (agree strongly).

• I share my photos on social media because it is meaningful to me.

• When I share a meaningful experience of my life on social media, the feedback is not really important, because the experience is more meaningful to me.

• I share my experiences on social media so that those who have the same feeling of that experience would enjoy it.

• I prefer to live that moment myself rather than sharing it on social media.

• Living my life in reality gives me more meaningful feeling than in social media.

• My long-term happiness can be gained through experience the precious moment than share it on social media.

• The meaningful happiness is an experience that is connected to my long-term feelings than short-term feelings.

Those items that were mentioned above are related to eudaimonic feeling (meaningful feeling). I also created five items which describe short-time feeling in different ways. These items are mentioned below:

I like to share my experiences on social media in order to:

• Show how much I enjoy my life.

• Show-off.

• Fulfil my personal needs. (I know that I have to explain what kind of needs they are).

• Get positive feedbacks.

• Pretend I have a good life.

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2.3 Ethical considerations

Participants were informed that their participation is voluntary and that they are free to withdraw from the study at any point. The questionnaire items were rather mundane questions and unlikely to invoke any distress. Benefits to answering questionnaires were emphasized to contribute to the project aims of examining the impact of technology on changing the concept of enjoyment in people’s life through social media. All participants were made aware of these risks and benefits through completing the informed consent prior to the start of the study. All data collected was anonymous meaning that no directly or indirectly identifiable information such as IP addresses, names, emails, had been collected at any time in the actual project. Additionally, the demographics were designed in a way that did not allow for identification, whether viewed individually or combined.

In addition, the main researcher would see email addresses of potential and finished

participants for two purposes. First, the flyer used for advertising contained the email of the researcher, and participants could email her to get the link to the study. Second, after

finishing the actual questionnaire, participants had been forwarded to a second questionnaire where they could enter their email to participate in the lottery. The email they enter there had not been associated in any way with the data. All email addresses have been deleted after the pay-out of the lottery at the end of data collection.

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3 Results

3.1 Descriptive Analysis

3.1.1 Frequencies

In total, 155 people participated in this study. Data from two participants were removed for not completing the survey. Based on descriptive statistics, from 153 participants, 85 were female and 68 were male. Fifty-five participants were aged between 19-29, 75 participants between 30-45 years old and 23 participants were over 45 years of age.

Regarding education, 39 participants had a high school degree, 78 participants had a bachelor’s degree, 24 people had a master’s degree, 1 person had a PhD, 7 people had a trade school degree, and 4 people preferred not to disclose their education.

3.2 Internal Consistency of Scales

Cronbach’s alpha was computed for perceived enjoyment (α = 0.94), self-esteem (α = .90), and short-time feeling (α = .85). The five subscales of uses and gratification also showed satisfying internal consistencies with α =.846 (socialization gratification), α =.825

(convenience gratification), α =.819 (social support), α =.871(information gratification), R=.896 (entertainment gratification), and R=.864 (escapism gratification). The personality subscales were all measured with two items each. The items of the various subscales showed different correlations: r = .488, p < .05 for conscientiousness, r = .276, p = .001 for

neuroticism, and r = .162, p = .046 for openness to experience. Although several of these correlations were low, I proceeded to compute their averages given that these are established and frequently used scales. Moreover, the correlation was computed for the two items “How much did you enjoy the concert” and “How much did you like the concert” that are related to short-time feeling (hedonic feeling). They correlated highly, r = .886, p < .05.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) used for finding the main factors regarding meaningful feeling which has seven variables which are mentioned in the following order: 1.I share my photos on social media because it is meaningful to me. 2.when I share a meaningful

experience of my life on social media, the feedback is not really important, because the experience is more meaningful to me. 3. I share my experiences on social media so that those who have the same feeling of that experience can enjoy it. 4. I prefer to "be in the moment"

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rather than sharing it on social media. 5.I can achieve long-term happiness better by

experiencing a precious moment directly, rather than by share it on social media. 6.living my life in reality gives me more meaningful feeling than being on social media. 7.for me,

meaningful happiness is connected more strongly to long-term feelings than short-term feelings. The value I got from KMO and Bartlett’s test was .730 which was significant.

Based on total variance explained the SPSS extracted two factors and the cumulative percentage was 62.068. This means that these two factors explained the 62 percent of the variance. In the scree plot I got also two factors that were above an eigenvalue of one and all the other potential factors were below that so there were not extracted. I also compared the factor analysis output with parallel analysis. The first and the second component were greater than random data eigenvalues.

3.3 Results from General Linear Model

Q1. Do people enjoy the concert more when they share their events on social media?

Q2. Do people experience meaningful happiness or short-time enjoyment when they share their events on social media?

H1. Sharing events on social media will positively affect the perceived enjoyment.

TABLE 1. Between-Subjects Factors

Value Label N

What did you do with the photos or videos you took?

I shared or streamed WHEN I was at the

concert

57

I only looked at the pictures myself and /

or showed them to friends

39

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Estimated Marginal Means

What did you do with the photos or videos you took?

TABLE 2. Estimates

Dependent Variable What did you do with the photos or videos you took?

Mean Std.

Error

95% Confidence Interval Lower

Bound

Upper Bound Enjoyment of the

concert

I shared or streamed WHEN I was at the concert

4.570 .080 4.411 4.730

I only looked at the pictures myself and / or showed them to friends

4.372 .097 4.179 4.565

Eudaimonic (meaningful)

experience through the sharing of events on social media in general

2.605 .065 2.476 2.735

2.205 .079 2.049 2.361

Hedonic experience through the sharing of events on social media in general.

2.488 .085 2.319 2.656

2.138 .103 1.935 2.342

Perceived enjoyment I shared or streamed WHEN I was at the concert

3.094 .076 2.944 3.244

2.855 .091 2.673 3.036

Meaningful experience gone through at the concert.

2.237 .027 2.183 2.291

2.214 .033 2.149 2.279

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TABLE 3. Pairwise Comparison

Depende nt

Variable

(I) What did you do with the photos or videos you took?

(J) What did you do with the photos or videos you took?

Mean Differe nce (I-

J)

Std.

Error

Sig.^b 95% Confidence Interval for Difference^b Lower Bound

Upper Bound Enjoyme

nt of the concert

.198 .126 .119 -.052 .449

Eudaimo nic (meaning ful) experienc e through the

sharing of events on social media in general

.400^* .102 .000 .197 .603

Hedonic experienc e through the

sharing of events on social media in general.

.349^* .133 .010 .085 .614

Perceived enjoymen t

.239^* .119 .047 .004 .474

Meaningf ul

experienc e gone through at the concert.

.023 .043 .587 -.061 .108

Based on estimated marginal means

*. The mean difference is significant at the .05 level.

b. Adjustment for multiple comparisons: Least Significant Difference (equivalent to no adjustments).

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I tested my questions and hypotheses that “Do people enjoy the concert more when they share their events on social media?”, “Do people experience meaningful happiness or short- time enjoyment when they share their events on social media?” and “Will sharing events on social media positively affect the perceived enjoyment”, by using a GLM test. The answer to the question “What did you do with the photos or videos you took?” was considered as the independent variable. I thereby compare participants who took photos and shared them while being at the concert to participants who took photos but did not share them on social media.

The two groups had 57 and 39 participants in them, respectively. The concepts “enjoyment of the concert, eudaimonic (meaningful) experience through sharing events on social media in general, hedonic experience through sharing events on social media in general, perceived enjoyment and Meaningful experience of the concert” were considered as the dependent variables.

Results from GLM show that there is no significant difference in enjoying the concert between those who shared and those who didn’t share the event on social media, F(1,96) = 2.477, p = .119 and this contradicts our initial hypothesis that people enjoy the concert more when they share their events on social media.

I tested the second question “Do people experience meaningful feeling or short-time feeling when they share their events on social media? “by GLM. The results from univariate test show that there was a statistically significant difference in short-time and meaningful feelings F(1,96) = 6.883, p < .05, F(1,96) = 15.334, p < .05 between those who shared and those who didn’t share the event on social media. This means that those who shared or streamed when they were at the concert, experienced both short-time and meaningful feelings in general more, as compared to those who did take pictures but only looked at the pictures and/or showed them to friends.

Moreover, there was a statistically significant difference in perceived enjoyment between those who shared and those who didn’t share any media on social media F (1,96) = 4.063, p <

.05, which is related to the first hypothesis “Sharing events on social media will positively affect the perceived enjoyment.” This means that results reject the null hypothesis.

Finally, Results from GLM show that there is no significant difference in meaningful

experience gone through at the concert between those who shared and those who didn’t share the event on social media, F(1,96) = .297, p = .587.

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3.4 Results from Linear Regression

H2. Stronger motivation to use social media for sociability will be positively related to higher perceived enjoyment.

Q3. Which motivation has a stronger effect on social media usage?

TABLE 4. Coefficients

Model Unstandardized

Coefficients

Standardize d Coefficients

t Sig.

B Std. Error Beta

1 (Constant) .626 .209 3.003 .003

Socialization_Gratification .055 .056 .071 .992 .323 Convenience_Gratification .190 .083 .197 2.284 .024 Social_Support_Gratificatio

n -.035 .062 -.042 -.566 .572

Information_Gratification -.026 .058 -.030 -.449 .654 Entertainment_Gratification .409 .074 .437 5.499 .000

Escapism_Gratification .183 .087 .191 2.107 .037

a. Dependent Variable: PE

Six independent U&G variables were used to predict enjoyment of social media use (PE).

Fifty-one percent of the variance in the dependent variable was explained by the independent variables, which is significant, F(6,145) = 26.82, p < .05. Entertainment, β = .44, p = .000, Escapism, β = .19, p = .037, and Convenience, β = .20, p = .024 were statistically significant and positive predictors, while socialization, social support, and information were not.

Therefore, the second hypothesis was not supported.

Coefficients

Standardized Coefficients

t Sig.

1 (Constant) -.365 .478 -.763 .447

Socialization_Gratification .062 .127 .043 .488 .626

Convenience_Gratification .296 .190 .165 1.556 .122

Social_Support_Gratification .113 .141 .074 .802 .424

Information_Gratification .111 .133 .069 .840 .402

Entertainment_Gratification -.067 .171 -.038 -.392 .696

Escapism_Gratification .588 .199 .330 2.953 .004

a. Dependent Variable: How often do you use social media?

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In a second regression analysis based on the uses and gratification, I regressed amount of social media use on the same variables. Six independent U&G variables were used to predict how often participants used social media. Twenty-five percent of the variance in the dependent variable was explained by the independent variables, which is significant, F(6,145) = 9.500, p < .05. Only Escapism was significant, β = .330, p = .004, while Socialization, β = .04, p = 626, Convenience, β = .16, p =.122, Social Support, β = .074, p =. 424, Information, β = 069, p = .402 and Entertainment, β = -. 038, p =. 696 were not statistically significant predictors.

This means that the escapism gratification has the most impact on the social media usage which is the answer of the third question.

Q4. How do individuals’ personality traits influence varied motivations for using social media?

In a series of regression analysis, I regressed the 6 different gratification variables on the big 5 personality variables to explore how motivation to use social media depends on personality.

Coefficients

t Sig.

B Std.

Error

Beta

1 (Constant) 2.599 .503 5.170 .000

Extraversion .034 .075 .041 .454 .650

Agreeableness .074 .091 .069 .805 .422

Conscientiousness .050 .087 .052 .569 .570

Neuroticism .010 .082 .012 .120 .905

Openness_to_Experience .029 .083 .030 .345 .731

a. Dependent Variable: Convenience_Gratification

Five independent personality variables were used to predict varied motivations for using social media. Table 6 shows that the dependent variable is convenience gratification. Two percent of the variance in the dependent variable is explained by the independent variables, which is not significant, F (5,146) = .385, p=.858. As the table shows, there were not statistically significant predictors. This means that none of these independent variables predict convenience gratification for using social media.

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Coefficients

t Sig.

1 (Constant) 1.984 .497 3.994 .000

Extraversion .137 .074 .163 1.855 .066

Agreeableness .141 .090 .132 1.565 .120

Conscientiousness -.069 .086 -.071 -.802 .424

Neuroticism .131 .081 .152 1.617 .108

Openness_to_Experience -.098 .082 -.100 -

1.188 .237

a. Dependent Variable: Escapism_Gratification

Five independent personality variables were used to predict escapism motivation for using social media. Two percent of the variance in the dependent variable is explained by the independent variables, which is not significant, F (5,146) = 1.623 p=.158. None of these big five personality variables had a significant impact on the escapism gratification.

Coefficients Standardize d Coefficients

t Sig.

1 (Constant) 2.535 .508 4.987 .000

Extraversion .005 .075 .005 .061 .951

Agreeableness .063 .092 .058 .681 .497

Conscientiousness .189 .088 .191 2.151 .033

Neuroticism .136 .083 .154 1.635 .104

Openness_to_Experience -.143 .084 -.143 -1.692 .093

a. Dependent Variable: Entertainment_Gratification

Five independent personality variables were used to predict entertainment motivation for using social media. seventeen percent of the variance in the dependant variable is explained by the independent variables, which is not significant, F (5,146) = 1.507, p=.191. Conscientiousness β

= .191, p = .033, was statistically a significant predictor, while Extraversion β = .005, p = .951, Agreeableness β = .058, p = .497, Neuroticism β = 154, p = .104, and Openness to Experience β

= -.143, p = .093 were not statistically significant predictors. To interpret the results, we can mention that the more people are Conscientious, the more they use social media because of entertainment gratification. However, this relation was weak, as indicated by the fact that overall, the portion of variance explained was not significant.

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Coefficients

t Sig.

1 (Constant) 1.739 .524 3.317 .001

Extraversion .017 .078 .018 .219 .827

Agreeableness .306 .095 .258 3.209 .002

Neuroticism .216 .086 .226 2.520 .013

Five independent personality variables were used to predict information motivation for using social media. Eleven percent of the variance in the dependant variable is explained by the independent variables, which is significant, F (5,146) = 4.690, p < .05. Agreeableness β = .258, p = .002, Conscientiousness β = .214, p = .013, Neuroticism β = .216 p = .013, and Openness to experience β = -.253, p = .004, were statistically significant predictors, while Extraversion β = .018, p = .827, was not statistically a significant predictor. This means that the less people are open to experience, the more they use social media because of information reason. While the more people are Agreeable, Conscientious, Neurotic, the more they use social media because of information reason.

Coefficients

t Sig.

B Std.

Error

Beta

1 (Constant) 1.552 .569 2.725 .007

Extraversion .070 .085 .072 .825 .411

Agreeableness .133 .104 .107 1.287 .200

Conscientiousness -.014 .099 -.012 -.141 .888

Neuroticism .276 .093 .274 2.958 .004

a. Dependent Variable: Information_Gratification

a. Dependent Variable: Social_Support_Gratification

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Five independent personality variables were used to predict Social support motivation for using social media. Five percent of the variance in the dependant variable is explained by the independent variables, which is significant, F (5,146) = 2.461, p < .05. Neuroticism β = .274 p

= .004, was statistically a significant predictor, while Extraversion β = .072, p = .411, Agreeableness β = .107, p = .200, Conscientiousness β = -.012, p = .888, and Openness to experience β = -.134, p = .110 were not statistically significant predictors. This means that the less people are open to experience, the more they use social media because of information reason. While the more people are Agreeable, Conscientious, Neurotic, the more they use social media because of information reason. To interpret the results, we can explain the more people are neuroticism, the more they use social media due to social support gratification.

Coefficients

t Sig.

B Std. Error Beta

1 (Constant) .795 .607 1.310 .192

Extraversion .208 .090 .201 2.310 .022

Agreeableness .213 .110 .161 1.932 .055

Neuroticism .230 .099 .215 2.314 .022

Openness_to_Experience -.075 .101 -.062 -.748 .456

Five independent personality variables were used to predict Socialization motivation for using social media. Five percent of the variance in the dependant variable is explained by the independent variables, which is significant, F (5,146) = 2.448, p < .05. Neuroticism β = .215 p = .022 and Extraversion β = .201, p = .022 were statistically significant predictors, while, Agreeableness β = .161, p = .055, Conscientiousness β = -.123, p = .161, and Openness to experience β = -.062, p = .456 were not statistically significant predictors. We can interpret that the more people are neurotic and extraverted, the more they use social media because of socialization gratification reason.

a. Dependent Variable: Socialization_Gratification

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3.5 Results from General Linear Model

H4. For people with low self-esteem, use of social media predicts enjoyment more strongly.

Univariate Analysis of Variance.

Dependent Variable: PE

Mean Std. Deviation N

2.9825 .55166 152

TABLE 13. Tests of Between-Subjects Effects

Dependent Variable: PE

Source Type III

Sum of Squares

df Mean

Square

F Sig. Partial Eta Squared

Corrected Model 7.716^a 3 2.572 9.955 .000 .168

Intercept 113.070 1 113.070 437.645 .000 .747

self_esteem_centered .027 1 .027 .105 .747 .001

Often 6.840 1 6.840 26.474 .000 .152

self_esteem_centered * Often

.111 1 .111 .428 .514 .003

Error 38.237 148 .258

Total 1398.000 152

Corrected Total 45.953 151

a. R Squared = .168 (Adjusted R Squared = .151)

Finally, I tested whether perceived enjoyment of social media depended on self-esteem. For this purpose, I regressed perceived enjoyment on self-esteem. As additional predictors, I added how often people used social media, and the interaction between the two variables. I used the GLM command in SPSS for this, and centered the continuous predictor self-esteem.

The table shows that self-esteem was not a significant predictor of perceived enjoyment, and neither was the interaction. Only how often people use social media itself was a predictor of enjoyment F (1,152) = 26.474, p < .05, which is not surprising.