Social Media Fatigue and Discontinuous Usage: A Meta-Analytic Structural Equation Modeling Based on the Stimulus-Organism-Response Model

As social media permeates people’s daily lives, an increasing number of users show different levels of discontinuous use behaviors. Guided by the Stimulus-Organism-Response model, this meta-analysis synthesizes 107 empirical studies (N=57,865) on the correlation between stimuli (social media overload and psychosocial stress), organism (social media fatigue) and response (social media discontinuous usage behaviors). This study was registered on PROSPERO (ID: CRD420251079070). The findings suggested that communication overload and technological overload show large level effects on social media fatigue, whereas social overload, information overload, fear of missing out, privacy concern and social comparison yield medium level effects. And the effect size of social media fatigue on discontinuous usage behaviors was also at a medium level. Variations in sample demographics, platform types, and the period background were found to significantly moderate the links between specific stimuli and social media fatigue. Furthermore, the results of the meta-analytic structural equation modeling analysis show that some of the social media overload and psychosocial stress stimuli have direct effects on social media discontinuous usage behaviors, and social media fatigue partially mediates the effects. The results offer theoretical insights into the mechanisms emphasizing social media discontinuous usage and offer practical implications for platform design and users’ digital well-being.