The Effects Of Relatedness Need-satisfaction On Social Media’ Usage

As a new-born social media, it had attracted the attention of scholars both here and abroad, but the domestic and foreign researches on social media are still in the initial stage. Previous studies mainly focused on the influence factors of the traditional media to explore the motivation of social media usage, as well as the relations between personality and social media’ usage. However, we are still puzzled on why people use social media, why use it frequently. In order to promote reasonable and appropriate usage of social media, it is necessary deeply understanding the psychological mechanism of people social media’ usage. This study attempts to research in recent years, the self-determination theory perspective to explore the social media why there is such a strong attraction to people, and the use of social media on people’s psychological health.This study is based on researches in recent years, and it attempts to explore why social media has a strong attraction to people, and the influence of social media’ usage on people’s psychological health from a self-determination theory perspective.This research mainly included four studies: The preliminary study using the method of questionnaire, investigating the basic information of social media’ usage among college students and relatedness need-satisfaction; In Study 1, we investigated the level of the relatedness need-satisfaction on intention of the social media’ usage through experimental study; In Study 2,we investigated the varies of the relatedness need-satisfaction, and its influence on social media’ continuance usage by a longitudinal and withdrawal design; In Study 3,based on study 2, we further investigated the effects of different dimensions of the relatedness need-satisfaction, disconnection and connection,on social media’ continuance usage by a longitudinal and withdrawal design.The main conclusions are as follows:(1) Social media has become a key part of College Students’ daily life.There was a significant positive correlation between the relatedness need-satisfaction perceived social media’ usage and the depth of using social media.(2) Relatedness drives people to use social media.Compared with the the higher subjects of the relatedness need-satisfaction, the lower subjects of the relatedness need-satisfaction tended to choose the social media;two groups in the two different types of activities reached marginally significant.(3) The level of relatedness need-satisfaction is dynamic changing. Just because of this changing, it promoted social media’ continuance usage.(4) As for relatedness need-satisfaction, disconnection is higher, connection is lower in the instant situation, disconnection drives people to use the social media, after social media’ usage, connection increased.