An Empirical Analysis of Social Media Users’ Disengagement Behavior based on Privacy Fatigue and Privacy Helplessness Perspectives

People are becoming fatigued and helpless with privacy issues in social media. Exploring the influencing factors of privacy fatigue and privacy helplessness and the consequences of disengagement caused by them is of positive significance for individual privacy protection and the healthy development of the industry. Based on the theory of Privacy Calculus Theory and the theory of planned behavior, the research integrates individual perception elements to construct a model, and conducts empirical analysis through a two-stage approach combining structural equation modeling and artificial neural network (SEM-ANN). Through empirical analysis, this study reveals the impact of privacy fatigue and helplessness on social media users’ disengagement behavior and its influencing factors. At the same time, the study also demonstrates the differences between SEM and ANN models in measuring the degree of influence of variables, and emphasizes the advantages of ANN models in dealing with complex relationships. These findings have important implications for guiding the protection of personal privacy and the healthy development of the social media industry.