When Standard Answers Become Shackles: The Impact of Social Media Experience Substitution on Individual Decision-Making Autonomy

Individuals are now sharing their experiences through social media posts in order to make decisions during the digital media age. This practice offers convenient access to information but might hinder independent thinking and decision-making autonomy. Experience substitution is defined as people substituting their own trial-and-error process with others' experiences. Based on information dependency theory, social comparison theory, and the availability heuristic, this paper investigates how social media information dependency influences decision-making autonomy and if critical thinking acts as a buffer between them. Through a questionnaire survey among 21 social media users (aged 15 – 22), the research finds that over 85% of the respondents actively search for others' experiences prior to making decisions; and over 90% of the respondents feel self-doubt whenever they have different experiences than those portrayed in mainstream narratives on social media. These results verify the presence of the experience substitution phenomenon, and show that critical thinking buffers the negative impact of social media information dependency upon decision-making autonomy.