Social media mindsets: a new approach to understanding
social media use and psychological well-being

Social media mindsets: a new approach to understanding
social media use and psychological well-being

social media, mindsets, psychological well-being, technology, agency, self-control.

Social media mindsets are the core beliefs that orient individuals’ expectations, behaviors, attributions, and goals about social media’s role in
their lives. In four survey studies (N 1⁄4 2,179), we show people hold distinct mindsets about the amount of agency they have over their social

media use (“in control” vs. “out of control”) and the valence of its effects (“enhancing” vs. “harmful”) that are meaningfully related to psycho-
logical well-being. We develop and apply the Social Media Mindsets scale, revealing that agentic, positive mindsets are associated with better

well-being and low-agency, and negative mindsets are associated with worse well-being (Studies 1, 2a, and 2b). Notably, these mindsets
explained more variance in relational well-being and psychological distress than other measures (Study 3) and were related to differences in
how people used social media and interpreted the time they spent on it (Studies 3 and 4). Our findings introduce a novel potential explanation
for heterogeneous social media effects on well-being.

Angela Y. Lee 1,�, Jeffrey T. Hancock1

https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmad048

Oxford University Press on behalf of International Communication Association.

11 October 2023

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