This is the author manuscript accepted for publication and has undergone full peer review but has not
been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to
differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as doi:
10.1111/sipr.12033.
This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Do Social Network Sites Enhance or Undermine Subjective Well-Being:
A Critical Review
Philippe Verduyn
1,2
, Oscar Ybarra
3
, Maxime Résibois
2
, John Jonides
3
, Ethan Kross
3
Affiliations:
1
Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Netherlands
2
Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, Belgium
3
Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.
Correspondence to: philippe.verduyn@maastrichtuniversity.nl
SOCIAL NETWORK SITES & SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING
This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
2
Abstract
Social network sites are ubiquitous and now constitute a common tool people use to interact with one
another in daily life. Here we review the consequences of interacting with social network sites for
subjective well-being—i.e., how people feel moment-to-moment and how satisfied they are with their
lives. We begin by clarifying the constructs that we focus on in this review: social network sites and
subjective well-being. Next, we review the literature that explains how these constructs are related.
This research reveals: (a) negative relationships between passively using social network sites and
subjective well-being, and (b) positive relationships between actively using social network sites and
subjective well-being, with the former relationship being more robust than the latter. Specifically,
passively using social network sites provokes social comparisons and envy, which have negative
downstream consequences for subjective well-being. In contrast, when active usage of social network
sites predicts subjective well-being, it seems to do so by creating social capital and stimulating
feelings of social connectedness. We conclude by discussing the policy implications of this work.
SOCIAL NETWORK SITES & SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING
This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
3
Social media are rapidly changing the way people interact. A defining feature of these
internet-based applications is that they allow for the creation and exchange of user-generated content
(Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Typical examples of such content are blog posts, Wikipedia entries,
Facebook messages and YouTube videos. These illustrations also reflect the fact that ―social media‖
is a broad term that encompasses a range of communication channels.
Among the most widespread social media sites are so-called social network sites. These sites
enable users to connect with others by creating personal information profiles and inviting others to
have access to their profiles and messages. Examples of popular social network sites are Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Social network sites differ in the purposes they serve (e.g., LinkedIn
and Facebook are mainly used for professional and leisure purposes, respectively) and their dominant
mode of communication (e.g., Twitter and Instagram are centered around text-based and image-based
messages, respectively). People spend a significant amount of time on these platforms. Mark
Zuckerberg, Facebook‘s chief executive, recently revealed that users around the world spend on
average 50 minutes using Facebook and Instagram combined each day (Stewart, 2016).
The enormous amount of time that people invest in using these sites raises the question: What
are the consequences of interacting with social network sites for people‘s subjective well-being—i.e.,
how people feel moment-to-moment and how satisfied they are with their lives? Many people around
the world pursue happiness as a basic life goal (Tay, Kuykendall, & Diener, 2015), and subjective
well-being predicts a range of consequential benefits, including enhanced health and longevity
(Boehm, Peterson, & Kubzansky, 2011; Diener & Chan, 2011; Steptoe & Wardle, 2011). As such,
identifying how frequent usage of social network sites impact subjective well-being represents a basic
question for social scientists to address, the answer to which has potentially important policy
implications.
Here we address this issue by reviewing the current state of the literature surrounding how
usage of social network sites influences subjective well-being. Our review is organized into five
SOCIAL NETWORK SITES & SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING
This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
4
sections. First, we clarify the scope of our review, identifying the criteria we used to include and
exclude studies. Next, we clarify the two concepts that constitute the focus of this paper—social
network sites and subjective well-being. We then review research examining how social network sites
affect subjective well-being and discuss the mechanisms underlying their influence. Finally, we end
by discussing the policy implication of this work.
Clarifying Scope
Over the past decade a substantial amount of research has examined the role that Internet
activity in general, and usage of social network sites in particular, plays in influencing a wide array of
socio-emotional outcome variables. Thus, before proceeding we clarify the scope of our review by
identifying the variables of interest.
Social network sites. Studies examining the impact of overall internet usage on subjective
well-being are not included here, as categorizing all internet activities (including social network
usage) into one overarching category is considered suboptimal (Bessière, Kiesler, Kraut, & Boneva,
2008; Burke, Kraut, & Marlow, 2011). Studies assessing the impact of specific social network site
behaviors such as cyberbullying (e.g., Kwan & Skoric, 2013) or sexual solicitation and harassment
(e.g., Ybarra & Mitchell, 2008) are likewise not included as each of these behaviors are governed by
specific mechanisms and, hence, require separate treatments. As such, rather than adopting a macro
(internet usage) or micro (very specific social network site behaviors) approach, we adopt a meso
approach in this paper, focusing on studies that assess the impact of overall social network site usage
and broad categories of social network usage patterns (e.g., passive- and active ways of using social
network sites).
Subjective well-being. Studies are included if the dependent variable can be directly subsumed
under the construct of subjective well-being (Diener, 1984, 2009; Myers & Diener, 1995). Thus, our
review will focus on studies assessing the impact of usage of social network sites on life satisfaction
(i.e., the ―cognitive‖ component of subjective well-being) or how good or bad people feel (i.e., the
SOCIAL NETWORK SITES & SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING
This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
5
―affective‖ component of subjective well-being) including symptoms of affective disorders in the
subclinical domain.
In this paper we will review studies assessing the relationship between social network site
usage and subjective well-being in healthy participants. As such, the present review does not directly
speak to the relationship between social network usage and the development or recovery from
psychopathologies such as depression or other mental disorders (see e.g., Brusilovskiy, Townley,
Snethen, & Salzer, 2016; Park et al., 2016). Neither will we review studies on pathological usage of
social network sites such as social network site addiction (see e.g., Andreassen & Pallesen, 2014).
Features of the Constructs
Social Network Sites
Social network sites are generally defined by three elements. First, users have a personal
profile. On most contemporary social network sites, these profiles do not merely contain static self-
descriptive information but are continuously changing as a result of updated content provided by the
user (e.g., status updates describing what one is currently doing or thinking about), by others (e.g.,
pictures of the user attending an event of another user), or by the system (e.g., activities on third-party
sites). A second key feature is that publicly visible lists of connections are shown. These lists
represent users‘ online social network, which refers to the collection of social relations of varying
strengths and importance that a person maintains. Finally, rather than surfing from profile to profile to
discover updated content, most social network sites are organized around a stream of frequently
updated content (e.g., Facebook‘s News Feed), which is primarily populated by posts from one‘s
connections (Ellison & Boyd, 2013).
Use of social network sites has boomed during the last decade. According to the Pew Internet
and American Life Project, which tracks Internet use trends over time, 65% of all American adults use
social network sites as of 2015. This is nearly a tenfold jump compared to 10 years ago (Perrin, 2015).