Understanding And Predicting Social Networking Addiction On Smartphones:a Reinforcement-Based Theoretical Perspective

The rapid advances of smartphones have dramatically changed people’s daily lives. Smartphones provide various functions, such as sharing instant news, playing games, navigating, social networking, and employing other applications. Because of their benefits to individuals and to the society as a whole, smartphones become extremely popular among a wide range of users. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that the problematic use of smartphones has become prevalent among a large proportion of users. The over-use of and even dependence on smartphones have extensively drawn social attention because of the entailing harmful and often disturbing outcomes, giving rise to significant behavioral and psychological problems.However, the few existing studies investigating smartphone addiction tend to adopt primarily a conceptual or descriptive approach. Limited comprehensive and theory-driven investigation has been concerned with the mechanism of addiction behavior in the use of smartphones. Although a significant line of literature exists in the area of traditional personal-computer based technology addiction (e.g., online gambling, online auction, and video gaming), the mechanisms underpinning smartphone addiction differs significantly because the specific and unique characteristics of smartphones (e.g., high mobility, instant connection, and ubiquitous access) have given rise to a fundamentally different usage context with new usage behavioral patterns.In this regard, smartphone addiction is believed to be a behavior that is driven by both reward conditioning experience (e.g., the pursuit for media utility) as well as habitual (and in some instances compulsive) behavioral mechanisms (e.g., the avoidance of/resistance to withdrawal). However, the existing traditional addiction literature tends to focus mostly on the reward-based view of behavioral motivation, whereas the importance of habitual and compulsive mechanisms in driving outcome behavior tends to be neglected.To address this gap in the literature, the current study develops an extended theoretical framework seeking to clarify the development of addiction behavior in the context of the smartphone usage, with a particular focus on the use of mobile social networking services (i.e., mobile SNS) through smartphones. We first define addiction in the smartphone context and adopt and then employ an extended stimulus-response-reinforcement (SRR) framework to develop theoretical model for smartphone addiction. Specifically, we conjecture that both positive reinforcement (i.e., the rewarding experience) and negative reinforcement (i.e.,the compulsive experience) processes evoke the feeling of urge that in turn leads to smartphone addiction. We further identify the most relevant factors that influence positive and negative reinforcement processes.To test and validate the proposed model and hypotheses, we conducted an empirical test with368respondents from active smartphone users in China. The survey data were analyzed using Smart Partial Least Squares2.0. The empirical results of this study support most of the relationships hypothesized in the research model. In particular, the results indicate that addiction is primarily determined by the felt urge.In the positive reinforcement process, mood enhancement has significantly positive effects on the felt urge. However, despite the significant effect of gratification on the positive affect, the direct effect of the positive affect on urge is nonsignificant. In the negative reinforcement process, both the negative affect and emotional relief play important roles in the spur of the urge. The positive effect of withdrawal on the negative affect is also supported. The results also show that technological facilitators (i.e., mobility and interactivity) have a positive effect on smartphone addiction.The findings of this study make several theoretical and practical contributions to addiction research. In terms of theory, this research advances our understanding of problematic technology use by proposing and empirically validating an extended research model integrating the positive and negative reinforcement processes, both of which have been found to exert an important effect on the development of smartphone addiction. In terms of practice, our empirical investigation is timely and imperative in enhancing our understanding about the underlying processes and motivations of smartphone addiction. The results will help educators and managers capture, predict, and monitor the key processes underpinning the development of the addictive use of smartphone, and consequently provide useful insight in the design of effective intervention strategies to counter the development of smartphone addiction.