소셜 네트워크 서비스에서 사용자의 플로우와 스트레스가 주관적 안녕감에 미치는 영향

The Effect of Individual’s Flow and Stress on Subjective Well-being in Social Network Services

Most of the SNS users argue that they feel techno-stress or digital fatigue when they use SNS. As the relationships in the SNS expand, users may feel work overload, digital fatigue, and techno-stress which are caused by the time and effort for the retaining the existing relationships established via SNS. The SNS activities require users’ time and effort to update their profiles and the current news of them, responding to online friends’ contents. Thus, more relationships they have, more stress they can feel. This study tries to examine the key factors that can affect subjective well-being of individuals in Social Network Service (SNS) usage. Therefore, this study, based on the previous literature, investigates what the sources of SNS stress are and how SNS stress and flow affect subjective well-being of SNS users. Major findings of this study from an empirical analysis with 201 SNS user respondents who have accessed SNS at least one time within one month are as follows. First, perceived opportunity cost and reputation recognition in SNS usage were found to have significant effects on negative emotion. Second, individual’s flow in SNS was significantly affected by challenges and interactions, and had a significant impact on positive emotion. However, SNS users’ flow did not show a positive relationship with their satisfaction of life. This study contributes to the expansion of theoretical discussion about the effect of individual’s SNS usage on quality of life in validating whether SNS usage can bring individuals subjective well-being. Implications of the study findings and future research directions are also discussed.