Personality and social media use: An investigation of different social media environments

There is much evidence to suggest that personality traits underpin many aspects of a person’s behaviour as they experience a broad range of situations and environments. As new online environments have developed during the 21st Century, previous studies have correlated specific social media platforms with personality traits; yet, few studies have investigated whether the relationships between traits and social media use are similar for different social media environments. This paper comprises two studies. First, we explore the relationships between personality traits and reported frequency of use for different social media platforms (Study 1). We find subtle differences between the platforms that relate to extraversion and those that relate to neuroticism; for example, a relationship is found between Facebook and extraversion, but not neuroticism. We then assess this finding through a field study comparing the personality profiles of Instagram users and Facebook users (Study 2). Our findings suggest that Instagram and Facebook do actually attract users with similar trait profiles. These preliminary findings could fuel future research seeking to understand how personality relates to patterns of social media use and behaviour in different online environments.