Title: Episodic social media impact on users

Authors: Samuel K. Doss; Deborah S. Carstens; Stephen C. Kies

Addresses: Andreas School of Business, Barry University, 11300 NE 2nd Avenue, Miami Shores, FL 33161-6695, USA ' College of Aeronautics, Florida Institute of Technology, 150 W. University Blvd., Melbourne, FL 32901, USA ' Nathan M. Bisk College of Business, Florida Institute of Technology, 150 W. University Blvd., Melbourne, FL 32901, USA

Abstract: With the abundance of technological devices, an increasing number of users of all ages rely on social media. There is a growing concern of the impact that technology has on the user community. This research study was conducted to explore these concerns and specifically whether individuals' characteristics are impacted from the use of social media. A total of 209 respondents from a private university in the southeast participated in the study. Self-administered questionnaires were implemented with the survey instrument developed by the researchers. Five hypotheses were tested on the relationships of social media technologies with attention span, time pressure, long-term orientation, polychromic attitude index, and sociability. The research findings suggest that there is no difference in attention spans or sociability in frequent or infrequent users of social media. Furthermore, the research findings suggest that episodic social media usage is not positively correlated to the long-term orientation, time pressure scale, and polychromic attitude index. Future areas of research are also discussed.

Keywords: social media; episodic usage; sociability; attention span; time pressure; long-term orientation; LTO; polychromic attitude index; frequent users; infrequent users.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSMILE.2016.079505

International Journal of Social Media and Interactive Learning Environments, 2016 Vol.4 No.3, pp.273 - 286

Received: 26 Mar 2016
Accepted: 08 Aug 2016

Published online: 29 Sep 2016 *

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