Late-Night Use of Social Media and Cognitive Engagement of Female Entrepreneurs: A Stressor–Strain–Outcome Perspective

Fakhar Shahzad,Sheikh Farhan Ashraf,Adnan Fateh,Adnan Abbas,Kashif Akram,Raja Suzana Raja Kasim

doi:10.1177/21582440211037652

Abstract

The excessive use of social media is an emerging phenomenon with several negative consequences in an entrepreneurial context. Based on the stressor–strain–outcome paradigm, this research aims to unveil the following: that social media late-night usage can affect two psychological strains (life invasion and technostress) among female entrepreneurs and thus influence their behavioral outcome (cognitive engagement). This study empirically tested the proposed mediation model using an online survey of 225 female entrepreneurs from the small- and medium-sized enterprise sector. A partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was implemented to obtain the results. The findings indicate that late-night social media usage significantly raises life invasion and technostress among female entrepreneurs. Moreover, internal strains (life invasion and technostress) reduce female entrepreneurs’ cognitive engagement and significantly mediate the association between late-night use of social media and entrepreneurial cognitive engagement. This study draws associated practical and theoretical contributions based on findings, which were not previously discussed.

Highlights

The popularity of the internet has encouraged social media to penetrate citizens’ lives
The results show that the value of R2 of entrepreneurial cognitive engagement is .582, which indicates that the selected factors explained 58.2% of the variation
Based on previous academic work on the excessive use of social media, current research results help to improve our understanding of late-night usage of social media and its underlying effects on cognitive work engagement

Summary

Introduction

The popularity of the internet has encouraged social media to penetrate citizens’ lives. The trend of social media overuse is becoming more and more apparent in routine life. Scholars commenced discovering the negative role of social media in the educational research environment. Cao et al (2018) discussed the sophisticated use of social networking sites (SNS) and their negative consequences on poor academic performance. Students use their phones to interact with others through social media sites. From the entrepreneurship perspective, the negative influence of social media and its related results are crucial and timely to investigate

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Conclusion