Social network sites influence recovery from social exclusion: Individual differences in social anxiety

Abstract Social network sites (SNSs) have been found to be closely associated with responses to social exclusion and to impact people with high or low levels of social anxiety in different ways. Our study tested whether social anxiety, an individual difference variable, affected the association between SNSs and responses to social exclusion. A Cyberball game was conducted to create social exclusion, followed by a waiting period during which participants were observed to see whether they would choose to use SNSs. Afterwards, recovery from participants' negative responses to exclusion was measured. Results showed that using SNSs benefited the highly socially anxious (HSA) group in terms of recovering from disconnection and feeling a sense of meaningful existence more than the low socially anxious (LSA) group. However, recovery from disconnection was lower for LSA individuals who used SNSs than those who did not use SNSs. Our research suggests that SNSs benefited HSA individuals after social exclusion, but hindered the recovery of LSA individuals.