Exploring The Relationship Between the Duration of Social Media Use and Online Social Anxiety in Chinese University Students

Abstract

The ubiquity of social media use has given rise to the concern that it may cause online social anxiety (OSA). The study aims to ascertain whether the length of social media usage and OSA level are related to Chinese university students. This research designed a questionnaire based on SAS-SMU developed by Alkis et al. and adopted SPSS for data analysis. According to the results, all respondents use WeChat daily, and the majority of them rely significantly on social media. Additionally, it is found that those who use social media less frequently have lower OSA levels than those who use it more frequently. Therefore, it is concluded that the duration of social media use is positively associated with Chinese university students' OSA levels. This phenomenon can result from several reasons, such as excessive exposure to anxiety-provoking content online, indulgence in the virtual world of social media, and the gap between ideality and reality. College students' reliance on social media may lead to serious consequences like increased OSA levels, declined offline communication skills, failure of close relationships, and self-denial. This research also provides some practical suggestions such as limiting the length of social media use and conducting self-evaluation about OSA level regularly to prevent the negative effects of social media. The research provides insights into studies on OSA and inspirations for future research on this topic.