Analysis of the Influence Factors of Social Media Fatigue among Chinese WeChat Users: A Perceived Overload Perspective

Abstract

WeChat is one of the main social media platforms where users obtain information and socialize in China. Nevertheless, a certain number of users generate a feeling of exhaustion from it and show a discontinuous use behaviors recently, which is defined as social media fatigue. The method of literature analysis is applied to this study, trying to probe the influence factors of the burnout of the social media amongst Chinese WeChat users, from a perceived overload perspective. Subdividing perceived overload into information overload, social overload and context overload, this paper puts forward a novel term context overload and discusses each of the above perspectives. The research finds that all these aspects positively impacts social media fatigue. The large quantity and low quality of the information increase the possibility of encountering social media fatigue. Additionally, strong ties and weak ties online friends contribute to social overload and social media fatigue in different way. Finally, dealing with a flattened context which is a mixture of separate contexts in real life also leads to social media fatigue. The paper desires to help social media develop healthily as well as people make better use of social media by analyzing these issues.