Social media mindsets: a new approach to understanding social media use and psychological well-being

Abstract Social media mindsets are the core beliefs that orient individuals’ expectations, behaviors, attributions, and goals about social media’s role in their lives. In four survey studies (N = 2,179), we show people hold distinct mindsets about the amount of agency they have over their social media use (“in control” vs. “out of control”) and the valence of its effects (“enhancing” vs. “harmful”) that are meaningfully related to psychological well-being. We develop and apply the Social Media Mindsets scale, revealing that agentic, positive mindsets are associated with better well-being and low-agency, and negative mindsets are associated with worse well-being (Studies 1, 2a, and 2b). Notably, these mindsets explained more variance in relational well-being and psychological distress than other measures (Study 3) and were related to differences in how people used social media and interpreted the time they spent on it (Studies 3 and 4). Our findings introduce a novel potential explanation for heterogeneous social media effects on well-being. Lay Summary People hold strong, core assumptions about the role of social media in their lives. These mindsets organize how people think about the amount of agency they have over their social media use (“Am I in control of my social media use, or is it controlling me?”) and the valence of its effects in their lives (“Is using social media beneficial or harmful for me?”). Our studies indicate that these mindsets are associated with psychological well-being. While people who viewed social media as a tool they could leverage to pursue personally meaningful activities (i.e., a high-agency, positive mindset) had stronger social relationships and less psychological distress, people who saw social media as a harmful dependency (i.e., a low-agency, negative mindset) experienced more depression, stress, and anxiety. In addition, social media mindsets were associated with the ways that people interpreted the time they spent on social media and how they used it. Our findings indicate that future research on social media and psychological well-being may benefit from complementing measures of the amount, frequency, and type of social media use with assessments of individuals’ mindsets about their social media use.