The use of social web applications as a functional alternative in loneliness coping: investigating the plausibility of a model of compensatory Internet use

Loneliness is a negative psychological experience that results from a perceived lack of supportive and intimate social relationships. While normative throughout development, the experience nonetheless may be indicative of psychosocial maladjustment in the context of ongoing developmental tasks. Moreover, social isolation and loneliness have been shown to be associated with increased mortality, physical, and mental health problems. The university context is especially attractive for studies of loneliness, since the transitions afforded by university entry and the normative expectations concerning the adoption of a vocational identity represent major stressors in emerging adults’ lives. Social integration might represent a major buffer, a correlate of mastering such developmental tasks. Just as with every stressor, the occurrence of loneliness implies the adoption of coping strategies aimed at overcoming the experience or its underlying causes. Engaging in activities on the Internet might be an effective way of loneliness coping, given the manifold and convenient ways to establish and maintain social relationships. The studies reported herein investigate the significance of social-compensatory Internet use for the lonely. The “Uses and Gratifications” approach served as a conceptual basis for the present studies, since it puts a large emphasis on the motivational dimension of media use and posits that use behaviors are active and serve the gratification of psychological needs. Since loneliness has been associated with negative Internet effects such as Internet addiction, the importance of behavioral engagement in social web applications for establishing and maintaining such addictive use behaviors was investigated (Study 1, Chapter II). Based on existing theory and empirical findings, loneliness was hypothesized to be indirectly associated with Internet addiction due to social-compensatory Internet use motives. The strength of this indirect effect, in turn, was hypothesized to be contingent on the level of social web application use endorsed by the individual. Study hypotheses were largely supported by the obtained results. Not only could this study show the specificity of social-compensatory use motives in mediating loneliness effects on Internet addiction, but also their contingency on the actual extent of social web application use. Albeit small in effect, the identified moderation of loneliness effects suggests that lonely people who effectively use higher levels of social web applications show a stronger social-compensatory use orientation. This, in turn, translates into higher levels of addictive Internet use. These findings suggested that lonely people are indeed driven toward the Internet in their attempt to gratify needs unmet in real life. Moreover, the Internet would seem to be a more addictive environment for those who deliberately seek to compensate for social relationship deficits in the real world by engaging in high levels of social web application use. Since loneliness has been associated with media use as a coping strategy, the occurrence of such coping through social media was investigated within the context of everyday life (Study 2, Chapter III). Adopting an experience sampling methodology, it was hypothesized that state feelings of loneliness would lead to an increase in the subsequent use of Facebook. Since social media might represent important functional alternatives for the gratification of social needs in the lonely, the strength of these situation-level contingencies was hypothesized to be contingent on trait levels of loneliness. It was expected that lonely (trait) persons would show an increased inclination to social media when feeling (state) lonely. Data were analyzed within a multilevel analytic framework, and major hypotheses were confirmed. Albeit small in effect, state feelings of loneliness were indeed predictive of subsequent increases in Facebook use. Moreover, trait loneliness moderated the strength of state loneliness effects, as hypothesized. Considering the moderating role of other person-level traits such as gender, social insecurity, and Facebook addiction levels, the meaning and the limitations of these findings will be discussed. While the studies reported here largely support the notion of compensatory Internet use in the lonely and show how psychological and media concepts can meaningfully be integrated to aid such study, several open issues remain. Reported effects were of rather small magnitude and the studies were largely cross-sectional in nature, hence not allowing for definite causal interpretations. Against the background of identified conceptual and methodological limitations, several suggestions for future studies of social-compensatory Internet use will be made.