Sensation seeking, media multitasking, and social Facebook use

Abstract

While media multitasking is an emerging issue, little is known about the underlying motivations of this behavior. We ran a large-scale online study with 351 Facebook users to examine people who multitask when using social media, and why they multitask. We found that the motivation to use Facebook for social reasons significantly predicted increased media multitasking. Moreover, this connection was mediated by individual differences in sensation seeking. These findings contribute to understanding of multitasking behavior and its relationship with the use of social media. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.