More comfortable online? Alexithymia and social media use

Abstract

Abstract: Alexithymia includes difficulty identifying and describing emotions, limited imaginative ability, and a tendency to focus attention on external reality versus inner experience (Taylor, Bagby, & Parker, 1991, 1997). Alexithymia is one feature of low emotional intelligence (Bar-on, 1996, 1997; Parker, Taylor, & Bagby, 2001). There has been limited, conflicting research on the topic of emotional intelligence and social media usage. For example, emotionally intelligent people tend to use Facebook more overall (Bektas, Toros, & Miman, 2014), but tend to use MySpace less for communicating with romantic partners (Dong, Urista, & Gundrum, 2008). Thus, we tentatively hypothesize that alexithymia may be associated with more social media usage because it may be more difficult for these individuals to form strong in-person relationships (Kauhanen, Kaplan, Julkunen, Wilson & Salonen, 1993). 938 online adults (72% female, Mean age=28.10, 84.8% Caucasian) completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20; Bagby, Parker, & Taylor, 1993) and self-report measures of social media use as part of a larger study. The mean score on the TAS-20 was 44.88 (SD=10.55), with 82 (8.7%) participants having alexithymia (score >=61). Overall, total alexithymia was positively associated with total social media use, β=.06, p=.05. In terms of type of social media, total alexithymia was marginally associated with Facebook use and Instagram use, βs=.06, ps=.06, but was not associated with Twitter use, β=.03, p=.43. When examining active (posting) verse passive use (checking) of social media, total alexithymia was positively associated with active social media use (posting), β=.06, p=.04, but was not associated with passive social media use (checking), β=.05, p=.14. Alexithymia is associated with higher levels of certain types of social media. Future research should directly measure social media usage, rather than rely on self-report. But to our knowledge, this is the first study to examine question of how alexithymic people use social media.