Social media and problematic everyday life information‐seeking outcomes: Differences across use frequency, gender, and problem‐solving styles

Abstract

Social media offers both opportunities and challenges in everyday life information seeking (ELIS). Despite their popularity, it is unclear whether the use of social media for ELIS heightens problematic outcomes, such as encountering too much information and finding irrelevant, conflicting, outdated, and noncredible information. In light of this gap, this study tested (a) whether the level of problematic informational outcomes varies with the use of social networking sites, microblogs, and social question and answer sites; (b) whether the problem level varies by gender and problem‐solving styles; and (c) whether the aforementioned factors have significant interaction effects. An online questionnaire was used to survey 791 U.S. undergraduates. Irrelevant information was the top issue. Gender difference was statistically significant for conflicting information, which was more problematic for women. The multiway analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated notable problem‐solving style differences, especially on the Personal Control subscale. This highlights the importance of affective factors. It is noteworthy that although social media use has no significant main effect, there were significant interaction effects between microblog use and the Approach‐Avoidance and Problem Solving Confidence subscales. The impact of microblog use on ELIS outcomes therefore warrants further investigation. Five propositions are posited for further testing.