The Relationship between Social Capital and Social Media Addiction: The Role of Privacy Self-Efficacy

Abstract

The rise of social media raises important ethical issues regarding social media user behaviors. This study seeks to investigate the determinants of social media addiction by focusing on social capital and privacy self-efficacy. We argue that social capital has a mixed association with social media addiction by highlighting the difference between social capital bonding and social capital bridging. Notably, social media users differ in their usage purposes; as some build more bridges, others focus on bonding. Moreover, we posit that the relationship between social capital and social media addiction is moderated by social media user privacy self-efficacy. We collected the data using a survey approach and the data was analyzed using covariance-based structural equation modeling. The findings support our hypotheses. First, we found that social media users with high bridging experience lesser social media addiction. Those with high bonding have more social media addiction. Second, social media users' privacy self-efficacy moderates the relationship between social capital and social media addiction. This occurs by reinforcing the negative association between social capital bridging and social media addiction and the positive association between social capital bonding and social media addiction. Our findings provide important theoretical contributions and implications for practice.