Will Digital Fluency Influence Social Media Use? : An Empirical Study of Wechat Users

Social media has increasingly been used in both personal and professional communications. Past studies note that individuals of digital fluency present distinctive behaviors in technology use. However, limited research has explored how digital fluency affects the relationship between individual gratifications and social media use. Based on the uses and gratifications theory and digital fluency literatures, we develop a model to explore the relationships among digital fluency, gratifications, and social media use. We test the model using survey data from 262 users of WeChat, which is the most popular social media platform in China. Results show that digital fluency is positively associated with social media use. Moreover, we find that digital fluency negatively moderates the impacts of maintaining ties, enjoyment, and information need fulfillment on social media use, whereas it positively moderates the impact of broadening social network. Our findings contribute to the literature by identifying the theoretical and practical roles of digital fluency in social media use. Full paper available at https://doi.org/10.1145/3290768.3290773