Who wants to be "friend-rich"? Social compensatory friending on Facebook and the moderating role of public self-consciousness

Authors:
Jong-Eun Roselyn Lee;David Clark Moore;Eun-A Park;Sung Gwan Park
Affiliations:
School of Communication, The Ohio State University, 154 North Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210, USA;Gordon Food Service Canada, 4147 Eastern Ave. SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49508, USA;Department of Communication, Film and Theater, University of New Haven, 300 Boston Post Rd. West Haven, CT 06516, USA;Department of Communication, Seoul National University, San 56-1 Shilim-Dong, Gwanak-Gu, Seoul 151-742, South Korea
Venue:
Computers in Human Behavior
Year:
2012

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Abstract

The present research aims to provide insight into social compensatory friending on social network sites by investigating the effects of self-esteem and self-consciousness on number of friends in the context of Facebook use. It was hypothesized that Facebook users low in self-esteem, when compared with high-self-esteem individuals, would engage in friending more actively and thereby accumulate a large number of friends as a way to compensate for the deficiency in self-esteem. We also hypothesized that the relationship between self-esteem and number of Facebook friends would vary depending on the levels of public self-consciousness. Data were collected from a college student sample in the United States (N=234) based on an online cross-sectional survey. The results supported the hypothesis on social compensatory friending, demonstrating a negative association between self-esteem and number of Facebook friends. Furthermore, the data yielded support for the hypothesized moderating role of public self-consciousness in social compensatory friending: the negative association between self-esteem and number of Facebook friends was significant only for Facebook users who are high in public self-consciousness but not for those who are low in public self-consciousness. Implications for understanding social network site users' friending behavior in light of social compensation motives are discussed.