Digital Overload: Fatigue and Information Avoidance on Social Media

Abstract

With the growing intensity of social media use, users are repeatedly reporting negative psychological states such as overload, fatigue, and exhaustion. In response to these conditions, various behavioral patterns have developed, among which information avoidance and discontinuation of social media use are most frequently examined. The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between different dimensions of social media overload, the feeling of fatigue, and information avoidance as a stress-coping mechanism. Data were collected through a questionnaire specifically constructed for the purposes of this research, while the measurement of overload dimensions was based on items developed in previous studies. The theoretical framework of the paper is the stressor-strain-outcomes model, in which stressors are operationalized as: information overload, social overload, and system feature overload. The psychological outcome of the stressors is fatigue, while information avoidance is considered as a possible result of their effects. The study was conducted on a sample of 121 students from the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Niš. The results indicate a positive correlation between information overload and feelings of fatigue (r = 0.576), as well as between system feature overload and feelings of fatigue (r = 0.293). However, although information overload leads to fatigue, it does not result in information avoidance, as respondents still feel a strong need to stay up to date with events on social media. A small but statistically significant correlation was found between information avoidance and system feature overload (r = 0.182).