Beyond Scrolling: Social Media’s Impact on Creativity

Although prior research has explored social media’s impact on team creativity and knowledge management, its influence on individual creative performance remains understudied. Drawing on Transactive Memory Systems (TMS) theory, this research investigates how social media deep structure use affects individual creative performance through TMS dimensions: specialization, credibility, and coordination. We surveyed 362 U.S. active social media users, focusing on Facebook usage, and tested the hypothesized relationships using structural equation modeling. Findings reveal that social media deep structure use significantly influences TMS dimensions, which enhance creative performance through individual creative efficacy. This study extends TMS theory to individual creativity and introduces deep structure use as a meaningful predictor to empirically demonstrate the link between social media usage and student creativity. Findings offer practical implications for leveraging social media to boost creativity in educational settings and provide a foundation for future research on optimizing digital platform use for academic and personal development.