The Effect Of Passive Social Networking Site Use On College Students’ Self-acceptance:A Mediated Model With Moderation

Self-acceptance is the key to the psychological health of college students,and being able to correctly understand oneself and openly accept one’s own strengths and weaknesses plays a crucial role in the psychological health and future development of college students.With the advent of the Internet era,today’s social interaction has been extended from traditional offline communication to online,and online socialization has become an important way for college students to communicate.In recent years,among the social network usage,the behavioral and psychological problems of individuals caused by passive social networking site use have received attention from researchers.Previous studies have shown that there is a correlation between passive social networking site use and self-acceptance,and that individual passive social networking site use predicts the level of self-acceptance to a certain extent.Some studies have also confirmed the association between upward social comparison and self-acceptance.Therefore,this paper further explores the relationship between passive social networking use,upward social comparison,and self-acceptance,and on this basis,introduces self-concept clarity and explores individual differences in them.The specific characteristics of the four variables,their correlations,the mediating role of upward social comparison,and the moderating role of self-concept clarity are explored.This is to provide a theoretical reference for enhancing self-acceptance among college students and to promote the development of research on self-acceptance as a positive quality.This study used the Passive Social Networking Site Use Scale,the Self-Acceptance Scale,the Upward Social Comparison Scale,and the Self-Concept Clarity Scale to conduct a questionnaire survey on 1300 college students from three universities in Liaoning Province;the software spss22.0 was used for related statistical analysis.The results of the study showed that:（1）Passive social networking site use can negatively and significantly predict self-acceptance.（2）Upward social comparison partially mediated the role of passive social networking site use and self-acceptance.（3）Self-concept clarity moderated between passive social networking site use and upward social comparison,and between passive social networking site use and self-acceptance.It was concluded that college students with higher levels of passive social networking site use and higher levels of upward social comparison had lower levels of self-acceptance,and high levels of self-concept clarity could effectively mitigate the negative effects of passive social networking site use and upward social comparison on college students’ self-acceptance.Therefore,to promote college students’ self-acceptance,we can start from three aspects: correct self-concept,active guidance by colleges and universities,and reasonable cultivation by families.