The influence of social media engagement on social desirability and empathy of Chinese youth in Hong Kong

Abstract

A recent survey revealed that social media penetration in Hong Kong is nearly 90%. The negative impact of social media on social bonds, addiction, cyberbullying, loneliness, and distress has been widely discussed. However, limited studies have focused on the benefits of social media engagement on psychosocial well-being. The present study aims to explore the relationship between social media engagement, social desirability, and empathy. Previous studies have found a positive relationship between social desirability and empathy. People with strong social desirability tend to behave in a socially acceptable way to offer empathy and avoid deviating from social norms because empathy is believed to be socially desirable. Therefore, it is hypothesized that social media engagement will enhance empathy directly and indirectly via its positive influence on social desirability. The present study obtained 224 samples of Hong Kong Chinese youth (mean age=20.24; 70 males and 168 females). The short form of the Social Media Engagement Scale (SMES), the Chinese Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability – Short Form (MCSDSF-C) and the Empathy sub-scale of the Chinese Interpersonal Reactivity Index (C-IRI) were adopted in this study. The mediation model of this study was examined by the macro “PROCESS” for SPSS. Social desirability was added as a mediator to the relationship between social media engagement and empathy. The results of the study revealed that social media engagement is negatively related to social desirability (t=-3.33, p=.001) but positively related to empathy (t=2.79, p=.01). Moreover, social desirability is positively related to empathy (t=4.95, p<.001). The direct effect of social media engagement is significant (t=2.80, p=.01) but the total effect of social media engagement on empathy is not significant (t=1.67, p=.10). In line with the hypotheses, the direct effect of social engagement on empathy is positive. However, it is interesting to reveal a suppression effect in the relationship between social media engagement and social desirability. Since youths with higher levels of social media engagement have less social desirability which in turn leads to low levels of empathy. This indirect negative effect suppresses the direct positive effect of social media engagement on empathy. In contrast to the expectation, higher social media engagement led to lower social desirability. Exposure to heterogeneous information in social media may expand the vision and horizon of individuals which makes them less likely to develop a socially appropriate and acceptable manner with consensual opinion. Further study can be conducted to examine more deeply the relationship between social media engagement and social desirability.