Reflecting on 1,000 Social Media Journeys: Generational Patterns in Platform Transition

TL;DR

This work introduces the concept of \emph{Social Media Journeys} to study the entirety of a user's social media experiences systematically, and identifies push and pull factors across the social media landscape.

Abstract

Social media has billions of users, but we still do not fully understand why users prefer one platform over another. Establishing new platforms among already popular competitors is difficult. Prior research has richly documented people's experiences within individual platforms, yet situating those experiences within the entirety of a user's social media experience remains challenging. What platforms have people used, and why have they transitioned between them? We collected data from a quota-based sample of 1,000 U.S. participants. We introduce the concept of \emph{Social Media Journeys} to study the entirety of their social media experiences systematically. We identify push and pull factors across the social media landscape. We also show how different generations adopted social media platforms based on personal needs. With this work, we advance HCI by moving towards holistic perspectives when discussing social media technology, offering new insights for platform design, governance, and regulation.

Figures (8)

• Figure 1: Study Procedure: Our participants used our tool to create their Social Media Journey, which we analyzed through graph metrics and qualitative content analysis.
• Figure 2: Tool interface for creating a participant's Social Media Journey. To capture what platforms people used (RQ1) and why (RQ2), participants self-reported their Social Media Journey as a graph structure.
• Figure 3: Long-tail distribution of platform adoption: most identified platform repertoires are unique, with only a small share of participants sharing the same repertoire.
• Figure 4: Journey overview of all participants.
• Figure 5: Journey overview of the Boomer generation.