The effects of Social Networking Site (SNS) use on college students’ friendship and well-being

•“Social” type SNS use was positively related to users’ subjective well-being.•“Entertainment” SNS use was not related to users’ subjective well-being.•Online self-disclosure was positively related to friendship quality.•“Social” SNS use was inversely related to online self-disclosure. The present study was conducted with two goals in mind: (1) to examine the influence of using different types of SNS use on users’ well-being, and (2) to examine the mediating roles of online self-disclosure and friendship quality in the relationship between types of SNS use and well-being. Participants were from two large 4-year undergraduate universities in Southwestern China. The study was conducted during Spring semester, 2013, using advertisements that described the nature of the research and indicated that compensation for participation was ¥10 (about $1.5 U.S.). Of the 402 students approached, 337 completed the survey (i.e., response rate was 83.83%). Structural equation modeling showed that “social” type SNS use was positively related to users’ well-being, whereas “entertainment” type SNS use was not. In addition, online self-disclosure was a significant predictor of users’ friendship quality. However, there was an inverse relationship between “social” SNS use and online self-disclosure, and no relationship between friendship quality based on SNS use and well-being. It should be noted that generalizations of our findings should be made cautiously. The cross-section design and self-reported usage of SNS would also be limitations. Experimental and longitudinal studies should be conducted to provide stronger evidence of causal relations among variables examined in this study.