Passive Facebook use and students’ academic stress: The moderating role of authenticity

Abstract

Objective: The present study examined the association between passive FB use and academic stress, as well as the moderating role of users’ dispositional levels of authenticity. Participants and Methods: A total of 188 college students responded to questionnaires regarding their FB use, trait authenticity, and academic stress. Results: The amount of time users reported they routinely engaged in passive FB use significantly correlated with academic stress. Further, users’ levels of trait authenticity moderated this relationship. Time spent passively using FB was positively associated with academic stress only when user authenticity was high. However, how often students passively use FB was not significantly associated with academic stress regardless of their authenticity levels. Conclusions: These findings suggest that using FB passively for longer time periods might be a way to avoid academic tasks, which in turn might be associated with greater academic stress for those students who report higher levels of authenticity.

Keywords:

• Academic stress
• authenticity
• Facebook passive use
• Facebook use

Conflict of interest disclosure

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements, of the United States and received approval from the IRB of the University of Houston.

Funding

No funding was used to support this research and/or the preparation of the manuscript.