With the prevalence of technology today, social network sites (SNSs) such as Facebook, WhatsApp, and Line are playing indispensable roles in people's daily lives. In China, WeChat is the most important and popular media that provides SNS functions, especially for youth [1]. Individual can obtain supportive social interactions [2], fast messaging, mobile payment services and all kinds of life necessary small procedures [3] quickly through WeChat. During the first quarter of 2019, the monthly active users of WeChat reached 1112 million [4] and 18 to 24 year olds have become the main user group for social networking [1].
Alongside the convenience that SNSs has brought to our social lives, SNSs excessive use has become a severe problem and have caused negative consequences [5] such as cognitive-emotional preoccupation [6], envy [7], depression [8], and addictive behaviors [9]. As excessive WeChat use tendency has become a serious social problem in China, especially for college students, who just have less limited access to their mobile phones and lack enough self-control [10, 11]. Moreover, social life is another main task except learning at this special stage [12, 13]. Wechat, as one of the most popular use social media to meet their basic psychology and reality life needs, has integrated into theirs’ lives. Thus, it is especially important to examine its trigger factors and underlying mechanisms and help them to reduce the negative consequences caused by excessive WeChat use.
Previous studies on excessive SNSs use suggest that basic psychological needs satisfaction may be an important trigger factor for youths’ excessive SNSs use [14, 15]. According to self-determination theory [16], basic psychological needs are fundamental and essential “nutriments” for individual development [16, 17]. Human usually seek to satisfy the following three basic, inner psychological needs: (1) competence, (2) autonomy, and (3) relatedness. High satisfaction of these inner psychological needs is strongly linked with psychological well-being and promote individuals effective self-regulation [17]. However low psychological needs satisfaction can trigger internalizing psychological problems, such as high anxiety and depression, and externalizing behavior problems, including addictive behaviors such as Internet addiction, and SNSs addiction [18,19,20]. In accordance with this theory, many studies suggest that psychological needs satisfaction could negatively predict individual excessive SNSs use [21,22,23]. For example, Ryan et al. [21] suggests that media can provide users with specific gratifications which may compensate for lower need satisfaction [21]. Another study by Sheldon et al. [22] similarly showed Low levels of relatedness in daily life seem to link with increased Facebook usage [22]. Moreover, Reinecke et al. [23] notes that, in addition to relatedness need satisfaction, the intrinsic needs for competence and autonomy can also be satisfied by Facebook usage [23].
Although existing previous studies have demonstrated the direct association between psychological needs satisfaction and excessive SNSs use, fewer studies have focused on its underlying mechanisms. Only a few studies highlighted the underlying mechanisms between psychological needs satisfaction and SNSs use [15, 24]. For example, Feng et al. [24] explored the mediating role of the role of cognitive and the moderating role of self-regulation in the association between Chinese college students’ psychological needs and internet interaction [24]. Therefore, from the perspective of the self–determination theory [16] and the emotional motivation theory, the present study aims to explore the mediating role of negative affective states and WeChat Use Intensity in the association psychological needs satisfaction and excessive WeChat use among Chinese college students (See the conceptual model in Fig. 1). These findings could not only improve our knowledge of how psychological needs satisfaction lead to excessive WeChat use of young users, but also guide the development of prevention and intervention strategies to protect college students from excessive WeChat use.
The mediating roles of negative affective states
Negative affective states is usually an unpleasant or unhappy affective states evoked in individuals to express a negative affect towards an event or person, which is not satisfied with personal expectations or needs, usually including anxiety, depression, anger, and loneliness[25]. In the present study, we mainly focused on two negative affective states, anxiety and depression, which are not clinical variables, just anxiety and depression symptoms of individuals, for the following two reason: First, there are an increasing incidence of anxiety and depression among college students in recent years [26, 27]. One study in Chinese found that nearly half of the college students had moderate levels of mental health concerns, including anxiety and depression [28]. Second, Previous studies found that excessive use of SNSs mainly linked to depression [29,30,31,32] and anxiety [33, 34]. Specifically, people with high anxiety or depression are often uncomfortable with face-to-face communication and face much more interpersonal difficulties [35,36,37], and would spend more time to take online communication as compensation [38].
Besides, negative affective states could be evoked by unsatisfied individuals’ basic intrinsic needs. Some studies have proved that low satisfaction with basic psychological needs was related to negative emotions and anxiety symptoms [39, 40]. Negative emotions arise from unmet psychological needs, which drive external behavioral performance [41, 42]. This is consistent with the emotional motivation theory, which asserts that motivation is one of the main functional attributes of emotion. Emotional motivation can stimulate behavior by amplifying internal drive [43,44,45]. In SNS usage, emotional motivation theory seems to confirm that the internal drive of psychological needs may be amplified through emotional motivation and affect the use of SNS. Self-determination theory also posits that people can maintain optimal functions and achieve positive personal growth by satisfying basic needs [16]. When the basic needs are hindered, individuals with unmet basic needs will fall into a maladaptive mode and then produce negative affective states or emotions. These individual needs may temporarily alleviate the negative emotions caused by the frustration of needs by pursuing nihilistic external goals or compensatory behaviors. This is why when the basic psychological need is unsatisfied and individuals may lead to overuse of WeChat to alleviate negative affective states.
Previous studies had suggested that the use patterns of SNS in individuals with depression and anxiety disorder were different [46]. Depression and anxiety could lead to different content and frequency of SNS use [47,48,49]. Therefore, we hypothesized two common negative affective states, depression and anxiety, might have played essential roles in linking psychological needs satisfaction and excessive WeChat use.
The mediating roles of WeChat use intensity
SNS use intensity is determined by the number of friends in SNS, the time spent on SNS, and the frequency of accessing and using SNS [50,51,52]. Ellisonand colleagues proposed that Facebook use intensity could be measured by the users’ participation activities, such as Facebook activities, the number of Facebook "friends", and the average daily use time [52]. Similarly, Salehan and Negahban [51] revised Ellison and colleagues’ measurement [52] and developed a tool to measure emotional ties to WeChat and the degree of WeChat integration into daily life. It is worth noticing that Salehan and Negahban’s measurement did not involve problematic consequences.
There are substantial differences between WeChat use intensity and excessive WeChat use. The key points include that first, from a purely definitional perspective, there are different definitions between excessive WeChat use and WeChat use intensity. Excessive WeChat use refers to the performance on the psychological level, and emphasizes the degree of mood modification, salience, conflict and other psychological symptoms caused by WeChat use. However, WeChat use intensity usually emphasizes the degree of use at the behavioral level, and mainly evaluates the daily situation of individuals using WeChat, such as the number of friends in WeChat, the length of time spent on WeChat, the frequency of accessing WeChat and other indicators; Second, from the perspective of the relationship between two variables, WeChat use intensity is an indicator of excessive WeChat use. Salehan and Negahban put forward that SNS intensity was a significant predictor of SNS and mobile addiction [51]. Van Deursen and colleagues also believed that frequent smartphone use was an important contributor to addictive smartphone use behaviors [53]. Previous studies had also suggest that the frequency of technology use has been demonstrated as a predictor of problematic use, such as increased frequent SNS use can cause problematic SNS use [51, 53, 54]. Excessive WeChat use is one of problematic SNS use, it can be inferred that WeChat use intensity may be a predictor of Excessive WeChat use. Besides, WeChat use intensity involves some items or variables about usage status, such as the spent time, the participation degree, and the frequency of WeChat use. Empirical studies used these variables as independent variables to explore their impact on excessive WeChat use [50, 55, 56]. They proved that WeChat use intensity (e.g.the spent time; the frequency; the participation degree) could significantly predict excessive WeChat use. The results of these research provided a basis for explore the impact of WeChat use intensity on excessive WeChat use. Based on this, we hypothesized that WeChat use intensity might play an important role in the relationship between psychological needs satisfaction and excessive WeChat use.
WeChat use intensity and excessive WeChat use are often affected by negative affective states, which can drive behavioral problems. The frequency of technology use acts as a mediator between psychopathology such as depression and anxiety and problematic technology use [53, 57]. Negative emotion may reduce or increase SNS activity frequency [48] such that SNS excessive use such as excessive WeChat use is more likely to appear [58]. At the same time, psychological needs satisfaction will also affect the strength of WeChat use. Motivation for media use (such as information acquisition, social interaction, etc.) change the frequency, number and intensity of media use [59,60,61], and motivate users to engage in specific social media usage behaviors [62, 63]. Therefore, WeChat use intensity itself may cause excessive WeChat use. Based on this, we hypothesized that psychological needs satisfaction dould predict excessive WeChat use through the chain mediation of “negative affective states—WeChat use intensity”.
The present study
In summary, based on the self-determination theory and emotional motivation theory, this study explored the effect of psychological needs satisfaction on excessive WeChat use and the underlying mechanism of negative affective states. This study would be the first to investigate the mechanism affecting excessive WeChat use from a more holistic perspective of the concept of psychological needs satisfaction, using the self-determination theory and emotional motivation theory.
This study explored the relationship between psychological needs satisfaction and excessive WeChat use as well as the psychological mechanism underlying their relationship. Four hypotheses were tested in this study:
H1
Based on the self-determination theory, Low psychological needs satisfaction could lead to excessive WeChat use.
H2
Based on the emotional motivation theory, negative affective states could mediate the relationship between psychological needs satisfaction and excessive WeChat use.
H3
WeChat use intensity could mediate the relationship between psychological needs satisfaction and excessive WeChat use directly.
H4
The chain mediation of “negative affective states—WeChat use intensity” could affect the influence of psychological needs satisfaction on excessive WeChat use.