Boundaries between online and offline realms: how social grooming affects students in the USA and Germany

ABSTRACT

Research examining the impact of social media use on the well-being of digital natives has resulted in a myriad of opposing outcomes indicating both positive and negative effects. Focusing on positive effects only, this study examines whether there is a boundary between online and offline realms in cohorts of student digital natives and what differences exist between German and US populations. Using data collected in 2013 and 2014 we find that social grooming activities in social networking sites (SNS) significantly increase positive emotional outcomes and indirectly increase subjective well-being. We also conclude that there is a significant impact of online social grooming activities on offline social activities. But this impact is significantly moderated by cultural aspects: only within the subsample of US students is this effect of spreading social capital from online to face-to-face interaction significant. This striking result can be attributed to the stronger separation of communication activities between online and offline life among German students. Further, these differences can be explained by differences in underlying usage motives, which do also differ between US and German students.

KEYWORDS:

• Social media
• social grooming
• online involvement
• well-being
• perception of exclusion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Anne Suphan is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hohenheim, Germany. Her research interests include social media, digital divide, digital sociology, and visual research methods. In 2013, she was a visiting scholar at Donald McGannon Communication Research Center at Fordham University, New York. [email: [email protected]]

Bozena I. Mierzejewska is an Assistant Professor of Communication and Media Management at the Gabelli School of Business, Fordham University in New York, USA. Her research focuses on management and digitisation and its impact on media organizations and media users. [email: [email protected]]

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Swiss National Science Foundation [grant number PBSGP1_146968].