How can people benefit, and who benefits most, from using socialisation-oriented social media at work? An affordance perspective

Abstract

Past research has predominantly regarded (private) socialisation-oriented social media (SoSM) use at work as a counterproductive behaviour and has thus focussed more on its dark side. However, given the prevalence of social media in today's work life and the various affordances this technology can have, social media might have important bright sides. In this research, drawing on the affordance perspective, we propose that the day-to-day use of SoSM at work is positively associated with perceptions of social connectedness, which is further positively associated with life satisfaction and task performance. We examined our hypotheses using an experience sampling study of 134 full-time employees in China across 10 consecutive workdays. The results of multilevel modelling showed that, as expected, daily SoSM use at work related positively with employees' perceptions of social connectedness, which in turn predicted their daily life satisfaction and daily task performance. We also found that the relationship between daily SoSM use at work and perceived social connectedness was stronger for employees with higher, rather than lower, perceived workloads. We suggest this moderating effect occurs because social media is an efficient medium, providing greater affordances, through which busy workers can meet their belongingness needs. Overall, our study sheds light on the previously less-studied positive effects of social media use at work.