Social networks behaviour as predictor of life satisfaction and health-related outcomes

Abstract

The omnipresence of social networks in contemporary everyday life draws increasing attention of researchers. However, the negative aspects of studied health–related issues in social networks activity prevail, i.e. increasing dependency, narrowing attention scope, shorter sleep hours. The aim of our study is to approach social networks participation from the point of view of life satisfaction and possible positive health outcomes. We include a wide range of characteristic behaviours in social networks participation and test them as possible predictors of satisfaction with life (SWLS – Diener et al., 1985) and health-related outcomes. The social networks participation includes information search, sharing experience, keeping contact with close people, emotion expression, opinion expression, artistic self-presentation. All scales were derived from in-depth interviews on social networks behaviour. The Chronbach alphas range between .65 and .83. In the empirical study, a structured questionnaire was administered to 302 participants, most of them women (69%) and young people between 18 and 30 years of age. About half of them are active Facebook users and log into their profile several times a day. Results show that this model has good explanatory power yielding adjusted R2=.489. Only two of the studied behaviours appeared as predictors of satisfaction with life. Free opinion expression is highly significant negative predictor, possibly being connected with frequent experiencing of negative emotions Artistic self-presentation, however, is highly significant positive predictor. According to our results, stimulating artistic self-presentation in social networks is an interesting option towards improving life satisfaction. In a further analysis we address health-related outcomes.