Four Stressors as Stimuli: The Role of Social-Media-Related Factors and User Related Factors on Social Media Discontinuous Intentions Heilin Alber Siva Haryoko
Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta
Abstract
Since the early 2000s, social media has transformed global communi cation, yet discontinuance intentions have emerged as a countertrend driven by accumulating psychological pressures. Previous studies often examined determi nants such as information overload or social media fatigue in isolation, overlook ing the interaction between external platform pressures and internal user factors. This study investigates how social-media-related factors (information overload, system features overload) and user-related factors (privacy invasion, cyberbully ing) shape discontinuance intentions through sequential mediation of emotional exhaustion and social media fatigue. Adopting the Stimulus-Organism-Response framework, data were collected from 200 active Indonesian social media users via structured online questionnaires and analyzed using PLS-SEM. Results con firm all direct effects but reveal that social media fatigue fully mediates the rela tionship emotional exhaustion alone does not drive withdrawal- it must crystal lize into platform-specific fatigue before discontinuance consolidates as a behav ioral response. These findings enrich SOR theory by demonstrating that the or ganism constitutes a hierarchical affective structure, wherein layered internal states sequentially transform external stressors into withdrawal behavior. Beyond its theoretical contribution, this study translates its empirical findings into action able information system design principles each confirmed stressor corresponds to a designable platform property, urging IS developers to embed adaptive fa tigue-detection mechanisms, interface minimalism, and privacy transparency in frastructures into platform architecture. Practically, these results call upon plat form developers and policymakers to engineer humane digital ecosystems through feature simplification and robust user protection, so users need not choose between connectivity and psychological well-being.
Keywords: Social media discontinuance intention, social media fatigue, emo tional exhaustion, Information overload, Cyberbullying
Topic: Digital Power, Social Capital, and Inclusive Resilience: Interrogating Gender and Inequality in Technologically Mediated Societies (Digital Power- Social Capital- Inclusive Resilience)
