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Abstract
The present study consisted of 209 respondents participating in a self-administered questionnaire developed by the researchers. The study purpose was to test three hypotheses. The first hypothesis was the number of social media accounts has no relevance to the length of attention spans. The second hypothesis was there is no difference in attention span length amongst frequent use of episodic social media and frequent use of non-episodic social media accounts. The third hypothesis was there is no difference in attention span length amongst users preferring mobile versions of social media versus computer versions. The study findings accepted three hypotheses. Future research is also addressed in the conclusion.
1.Introduction
The number of users and unique visits daily to social media sites are increasing exponentially (Keenan & Ali, 2009). Different social media sites encourage sociability in unique ways based on features or design practices of these sites that enable users to socialize with each other. Social media is a component of individuals' lives that continues to affect how humans socialize. The present study identified if participants with shorter attention spans have more social media accounts, prefer episodic social media applications and have a high frequency of use of their social media accounts from a mobile device or computer. Lukinova, Myagkov, and Shishkin (2014) discuss how evolutionary psychologists suggest that humans are social animals that crave a social environment. It is not surprising that online social networks emerged to feed humans desire to be part of a social environment. For individuals that cannot socialize in person such as those that live at a distance from their family and friends or that have a medical condition, social media networks can fulfill humans' need to be social.
The researchers developed the terms episodic and non-episodic social media as a method to classify different types of social media. A definition for episodic social media is social media that occurs at irregular intervals consisting of loosely connected information. Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and Vine fall under this definition since each tweet, video or picture is often a stand-alone piece of information that does not have to be in relation to previous or future pieces of information. Episodic social media also has limitations on the number of characters and/or a limited time...