Not so ephemeral after all: Longitudinal associations between emerging adults' engagement with ephemeral social media features, production stress, and social capital

Many social media platforms have introduced ephemeral features in recent years, which either limit how often content can be viewed (e.g., Snaps on Snapchat) or how long it remains accessible (e.g., Stories on Instagram). Despite its popularity, costs and benefits of ephemeral feature engagement for (young people’s) psychological and social well-being are unclear. Such features may provide benefits like resource-efficient means to cultivate bonding and bridging capital. On the cost side, engagement may involve production-related digital stress as a consequence of posts’ limited lifespan, possibly tainting social relationships. Structural equation modeling using data from a two-wave panel survey among youth (NW1 = 978 & NW2 = 415; 16–21 years old) suggests ephemeral feature engagement can be predicted by bonding capital and may result in production stress. Production stress, however, was related to reduced bridging capital. These findings point toward an interplay between motivations for engaging ephemeral features, psychological and interpersonal consequences.