The dark side of online social networks (OSNs) : exploring users' negative experiences

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.The use of Online Social Networks (OSNs) has increasingly grown over the past few years, and subsequently many studies have reported several positive effects of using OSNs. However, negative effects of using OSNs have so far received less attention. Adverse outcomes, risks, and negative effects of using OSNs have been considered as the dark side of OSNs. Given a lack of a comprehensive picture of the dark side of using OSNs and how various negative effects maybe related, this study has been conducted to i) explore adverse consequences of OSNs use from users’ perspective that have been previously reported in the literature, ii) categorise the explored negative effects to identify the characteristics of the dark side of using OSNs, iii) develop and validate a framework for the dark side of OSNs use, and iv) propose directions for future research for developing strategies in order to reduce negative effects of OSNs use. Firstly a systematic literature review was undertaken to gain an insight into existing studies on the dark side of OSNs use. A total of 43 negative effects of OSNs use were extracted from the content of the 29 selected articles for review. A coding process was used and negative effects were categorised into six groups or themes: i) cost of social exchange, ii) cyber bullying, iii) low performance, iv) annoying content, v) privacy concerns, and vi) security threats. Then, on the basis of these six themes and their underlying sub-categories, a framework for the dark of using OSNs and its characteristics was proposed. Next, the validity of the proposed framework was verified by conducting a semi-structured expert interview research. The interview process was held with 12 experts in the field of information systems, computing science and psychology. Experts agreed with 94.3 % of findings, and provided feedback for minor changes and clarifications. This study contributes to the literature in terms of both theory and practice. The key theoretical contribution of this study is to offer a comprehensive picture of users’ negative experience through developing and validating a framework for the dark side of OSNs use. The practical contributions are i) raising users awareness of the adverse consequences of using OSNs, ii) informing policy makers about what constitutes the dark side of OSNs, iii) guiding practitioners and authorities to develop educational content for users, and iv) informing OSNs developers about how to protect their users against adverse outcome of platform use

Addiction to Social Network Site Use: An Information Technology Identity Perspective

As the popularity of social network sites (SNSs) has grown substantially over the past years, several negative effects of using SNSs have been experienced by users and reported by Information Systems (IS) researchers. Addiction to SNSs is one of such negative experiences, which has widely been considered from a psychopathology perspective. While increasingly there is more studies in IS on this phenomenon, it is still unclear what characterises addiction to SNSs and what may influence it. This in-progress study adopts an information technology (IT) identity perspective and applies Dual Systems Theory as well as Protection Motivation Theory to provide an initial understanding of what impacts SNS addiction and how to combat it from an IT/SNS identity perspective. To achieve these objectives, we reviewed the literature and proposed a preliminary framework of addiction to SNSs use. We then offer discuss research implications and propose ideas for future studie

Impacts of Dark Side of Online Social Networks (OSNs) on Users: an Agenda for Future Research

The use of online social networks (OSNs) has grown substantially over the past few years and many studies have reported positive effects of using OSNs platforms. However, the negative effects of OSNs have received little attention. Given the lack of studies in this area, we conducted a review of top information systems journals to explore the gaps in the literature. Our review identified a number of theoretical and practical gaps. We then recommended an agenda for the future research, highlighting the importance of the dark side of OSNs and guiding researchers on how they can identify, mitigate and reduce negative consequences of using OSNs on different aspects of human lives