Demystifying the Link between Social Media Addiction and Sharing without Verification: The Role of Absentmindedness and Wellbeing

Abstract

We use salience and dual-system theories as the lens to investigate how (via which intervening mechanism) and when (under what condition(s)) social media addiction impacts unverified information sharing. Based on results from analyzing data from 234 social media users, we found that social media addiction augments unverified information sharing, and that absentmindedness partially mediates this relationship. Furthermore, we establish that wellbeing status buffers the harmful impact of social media addiction on unverified information sharing and absentmindedness.