The social media break-up: Psycho-behavioral measures and implications

Abstract

In the ever-changing global context, the need to understand why users discontinue using social media platforms is rapidly rising. Comprehending the backdrop of such decisions and factors governing the effects, as mentioned earlier, may help users to make such decisions and help service providers to mitigate them. There is a need to enrich the theoretical account of the phenomenon of social media discontinuation. Other authors focused on different social media platforms, but we have mainly used Facebook with sound justification to select its users as participants. We applied a quantitative study to survey 384 Facebook users, selecting the convenience sampling method. We integrated the 'Stimulus-Organism-Response' (S-O-R) framework and applied the Smart-PLS technique and software. The results support this framework and indicate that information overload, communication overload, social media self-efficacy, privacy concern, social media helpfulness, and annoyance (as stimuli). Results demonstrate that increase the fatigue feelings integrated with perceived relevance (i.e., organism) of social media users, which in turn, increases their social media discontinuance intentions and ad avoidance behavior (i.e., response). This research sheds light on the antecedents of social networking services (SNS) fatigue that influences overall Facebook fatigue and suggests practical implications for the ever-expanding SNS market. Our findings offer valuable insights to marketers, entrepreneurs, and organizations in every sector regarding the social media usage and break-up issues of individual users.