Social media discontinuance: the salient roles of dark side and regret

ABSTRACT

This study examines why some social media users choose to stop using these platforms, despite their widespread popularity. The research suggests that negative experiences associated with social media, which is referred to as the dark side of social media, can lead to feelings of regret and a desire to discontinue use. Privacy controls are also found to be important factors in users' decisions to discontinue using social media. Using case studies and an interpretive approach, the study proposes a new theoretical model for understanding social media discontinuance intention. It shows that regret is influenced by the dark side of social media that includes cyberbullying, misinformation, information overload, misuse, and online social stress. Regret and privacy control both influence discontinuance intention. In addition, the model identifies privacy controls as mitigating tools for regret, and summarizes privacy control types and methods that can alleviate the effects of dark side.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ziyue Huang

Ziyue Huang is an Assistant Professor of Information Systems at the College of New Jersey. She has a Ph.D. in Information Systems from University of North Carolina Greensboro. Her primary research interests lie in information privacy, dark side of IT, and social media analytics.

Prashant Palvia

Prashant Palvia is Joe Rosenthal Excellence Professor in the Bryan School of Business & Economics at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, USA. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Global Information Technology Management, Associate Editor for Information & Management. His research has been published in such journals as the MIS Quarterly, Journal of AIS, Decision Sciences, Communications of the ACM, Communications of the AIS, Information & Management, and Decision Support Systems. Recently, he with his co-editors published the book “The World IT Project: Global Issues in Information Technology”.

Nikhil Mehta

Nikhil Mehta is an Associate Professor of Information Systems (IS) in Bryan School of Business and Economics at University of North Carolina Greensboro. Nikhil has a Ph.D. in Management of Information Technology and Innovation from Auburn University. His research interests include socio-technical aspects of IS development, socio-behavioral impacts of IS, IS success, and strategic management of IS. His research has been published or is forthcoming in the Journal of Management Information Systems, European Journal of Information Systems, Journal of Management, Decision Sciences, Journal of Information Technology, Information & Management, MIS Quarterly Executive, Journal of Business Research, Communications of the ACM, and presented at conferences worldwide.