Habits and the Electronic Herd: The psychology behind social media’s successes and failures

What is it about?

This paper uses the psychology of habits to explain the successes and failures of large-scale social networking sites, as well as review existing literature on technology habits and beyond.

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Photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash

Photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Habits not only help to explain why present social media sites are successful, but may also explain future technological success. The habit model presented also explains non-habitual behavior and use of social media sites. This helps break away from addiction models of social media use, and provides a parsimonious explanation of how social media use becomes frequent.