Social Media Motives, Well-Being And Flourishing Among Housewives: A Structural Model

Abstract

Social media is not a new topic in academic research, nor in policy making and societal issues. The usage of social media has grown so rapid that leads to various issues, yet little is known about why Malaysian women, especially the housewives use social media and the effects associated with well-being and flourishing. Although literatures on motives for using social media among women is enlightening, but the findings may not reflects the full spectrum of social media motives among Malaysian housewives due to some unique affordances. This study explores housewives’ motives of social media usage and its effects on their well-being and flourishing. Five motives are proposed namely Escapism, Information Seeking, Friendship Maintenance, Relationship Initiation, and Nostalgia, which were then tested for with Well-being and Flourishing. 268 housewives in Malaysia, who are active users of social media in daily lives were surveyed. PLS-SEM were employed to test the hypotheses. The findings show that motives of social media usage among housewives have significant and positive impact on both well-being and flourishing. This study provides insight on the effects of social media motives on women’s psychological state especially well-being and flourishing.

Keywords: Flourishing, housewives, motives, social media, well-being

Introduction

Social media grow drastically over the years. Even though social media are seen as fun to use, provide great companionship, and resourceful, they also provide various negative effects to the users, regardless of gender and other demographic background. Tran (2020) revealed that more women than men used Instagram, while Pew Internet Research (2017) revealed that women outnumbered men in Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest usage, men only get the better of the LinkedIn, while Twitter equal. Social media were also found to have a significant role and impacts towards the life of women especially in communicating their voice (Chaniago, 2020) while Nurfalah et al. (2020) highlight the positive effects of social media among housewives.

Intelligent and ingenious housewives should also pursue new knowledge and conducts to improve their decision-making capabilities, or even a change of family attitudes when required (Divatia & Patel, 2017; Tripathi & Al-Shahri, 2016). An example of women empowerment in the social media has been demonstrated by a group of housewives in Hyderabad, India (Gogoi, 2019). They have taken the advantage of social media and social commerce site to attract investors and has been seen as the wave of social media entrepreneurship in India. There is no doubt that women, especially housewives, are the anchor in influencing a decision-making process by their followers or customers (Wardana, 2018). Women should involve in gaining technological skills to take advantage of social media (Odine, 2013). Thus, with the appropriate knowledge in managing social media, women especially housewives may be at a lead in attracting cohorts with well-being and flourished through social media.

Problem Statement

Thus far, the usage of social media is recorded not for positive context per se, and it involved incremental figure in financial commitment. Consumers, including women, spend a huge amount of money for fee subscription, monthly charges, etc, but mostly for leisure, entertainment, and social purposes (Malaymail Online, 2016). This is also true for housewives who are active users of social media, which bring us to the questions of why they spent money on social media and for what reasons? Focus on social media usage among housewives and effects in their life are also being emphasized by Divatia and Patel (2017). In addition, many studies focused on younger social media users such as university students (Hamid et al., 2015), and children (Rahi, 2015) but not many put focus on women and housewives.

Lack of confidence among housewives in utilizing social media to enhance their economic stability has also hindered opportunities in moving forward. Given the right guidance and information, housewives are among those who can benefit from this phenomenon (Ging, 2015). Studies also found that women suffered more from the usage of social media as compared to men. Sei-Ching (2016) found that women were more affected with social media which include too much information while men on the unconnected and obsolete information. Another comparison, a housewife and a working women on psychological domain found that there was a significant difference (Ahmad & Khan, 2018). They found that housewives had poorer mental health and lower self-esteem, with depression which is a result from an unhealthy social life. In another perspective, Al-Saggaf’s (2017) study on female users found more lonely users exposed sensitive and non-sensitive information on Facebook as compared to not-lonely female users. Similarly, according to Sjoraida et al. (2020, p. 26), “life of housewives who does the same thing with repeatedly (routine) will experience the symptoms of stress, let alone the housewife had previously been working in the office”. Therefore, housewives tend to eradicate those sentiments by presence active in social media and by gaining constructive frame of mind from their virtual existence.

Research Questions

Using social media as a basis of the study, the following research questions were proposed:

• What are the motives for using social media among housewives?
• How are the motives of social media usage associated with housewives’ well-being and flourishing?

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study is twofold:

• to identify the motives for using social media among housewives
• to examine the social media motives associated with housewives’ well-being and flourishing

Research Methods

This research adopts a cross-sectional online survey. Participants of the survey were selected via snowball sampling and the main criteria for selection of respondents is housewives who actively use social media in daily lives and can be reached via social media, especially Facebook and WhatsApp. The instrument for the survey was a set of questionnaire consisting the demographic profile of the respondents, and constructs which were adapted from two main references, namely Motives of Using Social Media by Yang and Liu (2017), and Flourishing Scale and Scale of Positive and Negative Experience (SPANE) by Diener et al., (2010). The instrument used a 5-point Likert-type scale (1=Strongly Disagree to 5=Strongly Agree) and data were analysed using SmartPLS software for Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM)

Findings

This section highlights the findings of the research, which were divided into the demographic profile of the respondents and the effects of motives of social media usage towards housewives’ well-being and flourishing.

Conclusion

The role of women especially housewives in developing family and community is undeniable. They are also the backbone of the well-being of family life, which can ultimately translate into steady national progress. Housewives are deemed critical in the modern world today because they are the backbone that can support family and community to survive and be competitive. This article has discussed findings on the motives of using social media towards the housewives’ well-being and flourishing. Results indicated that the motives of using social media are directly related to their well-being and flourishing, thus it affects the overall psychological state of the housewives.

Acknowledgments

This study is supported by the UUM CoE/RU grant, awarded by Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM), S/O Code: 13751. We would also like to extend our appreciation to Suri Rumah Rahmah, an NGO which have helped us tremendously throughout this research.

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