When Social Networking Turns to Social Overload: Explaining the Stress, Emotional Exhaustion, and Quitting Behavior from Social Network Sites' Users

This research responds to a current phenomenon that individuals experience fatigue, while using social network sites, such as Facebook, which original intend to provide hedonic value to users. To explain this current phenomenon, we propose and evaluate a research model based on the stress-strain-outcome model. Focal point is the stressor social overload, which induces feelings of being emotional exhausted. For that reason, some users of social network sites start to get dissatisfied and report an increasing discontinuous usage intention. In addition, the research article provides evidence for the fact that the effect of stress on the two outcome variables satisfaction and discontinuous usage intention is fully mediated through strain. This is validated with an empirical survey with 523 Facebook users. Several implications for technology adoption research are discussed.