Oversharing on Social Media: Anxiety, Attention-Seeking, and Social Media Addiction Predict the Breadth and Depth of Sharing

Oversharing on social media by adolescents is a considerable problem in the digital age, and has the potential to instigate online shaming, cyberbullying, identity theft, and other security risks. To date, oversharing has not been comprehensively studied and there is scarce understanding of the poss...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychological reports 2024-04, Vol.127 (2), p.513-530
Main Authors: Shabahang, Reza, Shim, Hyejin, Aruguete, Mara S., Zsila, Ágnes
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Anxiety
Attention
Female
Humans
Internet Addiction Disorder
Iran
Male
Social Media
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Oversharing on social media by adolescents is a considerable problem in the digital age, and has the potential to instigate online shaming, cyberbullying, identity theft, and other security risks. To date, oversharing has not been comprehensively studied and there is scarce understanding of the possible psychological conditions that may underlie this maladaptive online behavior. This study aimed to measure online oversharing and its potential psychological correlates among adolescents. Data were collected from 352 Iranian adolescent social media users (270 girls and 82 boys; Mage = 16.38, SD = 1.71). The Online Oversharing Inventory, developed for this study, demonstrated unidimensionality and excellent internal consistency. Further results showed that boys overshared significantly more on social media than girls did. Anxiety, attention-seeking, and social media addiction were significantly associated with elevated levels of online oversharing. Results show that the Online Oversharing Inventory is a brief and robust tool for the assessment of high frequency self-disclosure on social media. The findings suggest that anxiety, attention-seeking, and problematic use of social media may predispose adolescents to overshare personal information online.
ISSN:0033-2941
1558-691X
DOI:10.1177/00332941221122861