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Open in new tab 691544 SMSXXX10.1177/2056305117691544Social Media + SocietyAlhabash and Ma
research-article2017
Article
A Tale of Four Platforms: Motivations and
Uses of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
and Snapchat Among College Students?
Social Media + Society
January-March 2017: 1 –13
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/2056305117691544
https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305117691544
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Saleem Alhabash and Mengyan Ma
Abstract
The current research explores differences between Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat in terms of intensity of
use, time spent daily on the platform, and use motivations. The study applies the uses and gratifications (U&G) approach to
contrast the four platforms. A cross-sectional survey of college students (N = 396) asked participants to indicate the intensity
of using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat as well as nine different use motivations. Findings show that participants
spent the most time daily on Instagram, followed by Snapchat, Facebook, and Twitter, respectively. They also indicated the
highest use intensity for Snapchat and Instagram (nearly equally), followed by Facebook and Twitter, respectively. With
regard to use motivations, Snapchat takes the lead in five of the nine motivations. Findings are discussed in relation to the
U&G approach and uniqueness of different social media and social networking sites (SNSs).
Keywords
uses and gratifications, motivations, social media, social networking sites, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat
Introduction
Social media are generally defined as “Internet-based, disen-
trained, and persistent channels of masspersonal communi-
cation facilitating perceptions of interactions among users,
deriving value primarily from user-generated content” (Carr
& Hayes, 2015, p. 49). In other words, social media can be
any form of computer-mediated communication where indi-
viduals not only set up profiles to present who they but also
generate content of their own, see, and interact with content
of their friends or other users online (Carr & Hayes, 2015).
Social networking sites (SNSs), a subdomain of social media,
have been defined as
a networked communication platform in which participants 1)
have uniquely identifiable profiles that consist of user-supplied
content, content provided by other users, and/or system-provided
data; 2) can publicly articulate connections that can be viewed
and traversed by others; and 3) can consume, produce, and/or
interact with streams of user-generated content provided by their
connections on the site. (Ellison & boyd, 2013, p. 157)
SNSs generally entail the creation and maintenance of online
relationships, both personal and professional, via various
platforms (Schauer, 2015).
Nearly, two-thirds of all American adults and three-quar-
ters of Internet users report using one or more SNSs (Perrin,
2015). While young adults (aged 18–29 years) have the high-
est social media adoption rates (90%), other age groups—for
example, teenagers and older adults—are also exhibiting
exponential growth in social media adoption rates (Perrin,
2015). Across different social media platforms, the numbers
of users are exceeding hundreds of millions and in some
cases (i.e., Facebook) exceed the number of citizens in the
world’s largest country. While Twitter was widely popular a
few years ago, newer social media such as Instagram and
Snapchat are rising in popularity. Facebook remains popular
among young adults, yet it is being abandoned by teens
migrating to Instagram and Snapchat (Duncan, 2016; Lang,
2015; Matthews, 2014).
Michigan State University, USA
Corresponding Author:
Saleem Alhabash, Department of Advertising + Public Relations, College
of Communication Arts and Sciences, Michigan State University, Room
313, 404 Wilson Road, East Lansing, MI 48824-1212, USA.
Email: sa@msu.edu
Creative Commons Non Commercial CC-BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction
and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages
(https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
2
Social Media + Society
The changing nature of social media makes for an inter-
esting comparative analysis of the leading platforms. This
study explores differences in uses and gratifications (U&G)
among Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat,1 and, in
doing so, aims to better understand the uniqueness of each
platform. This study applies the U&G approach across plat-
forms to predict use intensity from a set of nine use motiva-
tions. Before providing the study’s theoretical framework,
the next section introduces each of the platforms examined in
this study.
Literature Review
From the World’s Largest Country to the Fastest-
Growing Movement
Facebook. Facebook is the most popular SNS. Per the com-
pany’s website, “Facebook’s mission is to give people the
power to share and make the world more open and con-
nected” (Facebook, 2016). Facebook allows people to con-
nect with friends, family members, and acquaintances and
gives people the opportunity to post and share content such
as photos and status updates (Stec, 2015). Founded in 2004,
the platform has over a billion active daily users and over
1.65 billion monthly active users, with a majority of users
accessing it via mobile devices (Facebook, 2016). About
three quarters of Internet users report having a Facebook
account, and 7 in 10 users report accessing the site daily,
highlighting the habitual and ritualized nature of Facebook
use (Duggan, 2015b). The majority of young adults (18–
29 years old) report using Facebook (87%), yet this age
group experienced a 5% drop in usage rates from 2013 to
2015, however, there was no significant change in Facebook
usage rates among Internet adult users (Duggan, 2015a;
Duggan, Ellison, Lampe, Lenhart, & Madden, 2015).
Twitter. Founded in 2006, Twitter has been categorized as a
microblogging site, where users interact in “real time” using
140 character tweets to their followers. Users can converse
using mentions, replies, and hashtags (Stec, 2015). Despite
reports indicating declining popularity and importance of
Twitter amid diminishing investment (Fiegerman, 2016;
Tsukayama, 2016), Duggan (2015b) reports no major
changes in the percentage of Internet adult users who have
active Twitter accounts. One-third of online young adults
between the ages of 18 and 29 years reported using Twitter
in 2013, compared to 37% who used it in 2014 and 32% in
2015 (Duggan, 2015a; Duggan et al., 2015). Over the past
few years, data about the number of Twitter users have faced
critique over credibility, as Twitter overestimates the num-
ber of users by including accounts that have not been active
for long periods of time (Bennett, 2011). Nonetheless,
recently Twitter released that it has 320 million active users
with 1 billion unique monthly visits to sites from embedded
tweets (Twitter, 2016).
Instagram. Instagram is a photo-sharing mobile application
that allows users to take pictures, apply filters to them, and
share them on the platform itself, as well as other platforms
like Facebook and Twitter (Stec, 2015). Per the company’s
website, Instagram has over 400 million active monthly
users who shared over 40 billion pictures, with an average of
3.5 billion daily likes for >80 million photos shared daily on
the site (Instagram, 2016). More than half of young adults
(18–29 years old) report using Instagram, thus making them
the largest group of Instagram users (Duggan, 2015a; Dug-
gan et al., 2015).
Snapchat. Snapchat is a social media mobile application that
lets users send and receive time-sensitive photos and videos,
which expire upon viewing (Stec, 2015). The number of Snap-
chat users has grown significantly in recent years because of
its recordability and modality affordances. The recordability
affordance allows users to post photos, videos, and text mes-
sages that disappear after 24 hours. Regarding Snapchat’s
modality affordance feature, users communicate with others
through photographs and video clips (up to 10 s long), while
also adding filters to their photos and videos (Waddell, 2016).
Specific to Snapchat—which has also been recently adopted
by Instagram—is the ability for individuals to select the audi-
ence viewing their content. Users can post their photo or video
snaps to their own stories, public stories, or privately send
them to other users (much like direct messaging on Facebook
and Twitter). Recent estimates show that there are over 100
million Snapchat users worldwide (Piwek & Joinson, 2016).
With roughly a quarter of young adults (18–29 years old) using
Snapchat, this platform was rated as the third-most popular
social media platform after Facebook and Instagram (Duggan,
2013; Utz, Muscanell, & Khalid, 2015).
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat are the four
leading social media platforms. Per Lenhart (2015), young
adults or millennials are the heaviest social media adopters
and users. They are born and have grown up with pervasive
information communication technologies (ICTs) and do not
know life without them; something that has become a defin-
ing common characteristic of this generational group (Cotten,
McCullough, & Adams, 2011; Palfrey & Gasser, 2008).
Millennials use social media for a variety of reasons, includ-
ing communication with friends and family members, infor-
mation seeking, and social relationship maintenance, among
others (Ito et al., 2008; Ling, 2008; Palfrey & Gasser, 2008).
This study explores differences in the U&G of the four lead-
ing social media platforms. The following section provides
an overview of the U&G approach as a theoretical frame-
work for our study.
U&G: A Theoretical Framework
The U&G approach has evolved in parallel to growing diver-
sity and pervasiveness of ICTs. The emergence of social
media and SNSs extended the U&G approach to include a
Alhabash and Ma
3
larger set of motivations and different forms of identifying
usage behaviors. Before we discuss the evolution of U&G
per the emergence of social media, we briefly review U&G’s
basic assumptions.
U&G has five major assumptions related to the nature of
media and their users: (a) audience members are active and
goal-oriented consumers of media; (b) people gratify cer-
tain needs when using media; (c) as media satisfy needs,
they become sources of competition to other need-satisfy-
ing sources; (d) media users are aware of their interests and
motives and have certain expectations of media that help
them with media selection and need gratification; and (e)
media users are the ones capable of judging the quality of
media (Katz, 1959; Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 1973).
Considering that media gratify basic human needs (e.g.,
social, psychological, and physiological), the study of
U&G takes into consideration users’ psychosocial individ-
ual differences, media use motivations (e.g., information,
entertainment, surveillance, personal relationship, identity,
and diversion, among others), and media use effects or con-
sequences to form an understanding of how and why people
use media (Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 1973; Papacharissi,
2008; Rosengren, 1974).
U&G is both one of the most-often used and criticized
theoretical frameworks. There are four major areas of cri-
tique: (a) conceptual ambiguity of motivations, needs, and
uses; (b) lack of a uniform way of measuring media use and
heavy reliance on self-reports; (c) problematic assumption
related to awareness of needs by users and being too indi-
vidualistic while disregarding other contextual and cultural
influences; and (d) limited explanatory power (Rayburn,
1996). Despite these limitations, the concept of understand-
ing why people use media is an essential empirical question
that continues to change with media development. While
enhancing the framework’s relevance, continued growth and
diversification of ICTs brings the challenge of diminishing
consistency across media types as well as the emergence of a
new set of motivations and uses in light to expand the U&G
framework (Ruggiero, 2000). The ICT boom has also led to
the reconciliation of some U&G assumptions, such as the
assumption about the active nature of media audiences, given
that ICT affordances facilitate individualistic and active
information seeking and selection (Anderson & Meyer,
1975; Chen, 2015; Dicken-Garcia, 1998; Morris & Ogan,
1996; Newhagen & Rafaeli, 1996; Rayburn, 1996; Ruggiero,
2000; Swanson, 1979).
The diversity of options offered by the Internet creates a
challenge for U&G scholars. In abstract terms, the Internet
has a set of unifying characteristics (e.g., demassification,
interactivity, asynchronicity, hypertextuality, packet switch-
ing, and multimedia; Ruggiero, 2000). However, one can no
longer regard the Internet as a single homogeneous channel
that conveys uniform messages. Social media offer numer-
ous opportunities distinguishable from those offered by other
Internet services and traditional media in functionality and
structure that manifest themselves on system and user levels.
This study takes this approach to shed light on cross-plat-
form differences in social media U&G.
U&G: The Unique Case of Social Media
The distinctive affordances of SNSs not only redefine exist-
ing U&G that have been previously documented with tradi-
tional forms of media but also the changing nature of using
SNSs changes the gratifications sought and obtained from
SNSs and reshuffles their order of importance in comparison
with traditional media, as well as in a way that reflects the
specific features of each platform. The following section
reviews past studies that used the U&G theoretical frame-
work to examine different SNSs.
Mäntymäki and Islam (2016) suggest that the use of SNSs
has both positive and negative influences. Using the U&G
approach, Mäntymäki and Islam (2016) placed social
enhancement and interpersonal connectivity as positive grat-
ifications, while exhibitionism and voyeurism as negative
gratifications for SNS use. Exhibitionism, interpersonal con-
nectivity, and voyeurism, respectively, were the strongest
predictor of SNS use and so was the number of SNS friends
(Mäntymäki & Islam, 2016). Mäntymäki and Islam (2014)
found that content consumption and content production on
SNSs are associated with different motivations: voyeurism
and exhibitionism, respectively.
Seidman (2013) suggests that use of SNSs can help users
build, communicate, and interact with other people as a way
to maintain social relationships. In regard to positive behav-
iors, such as self-promotion, Belk (2013) found that self-
disclosure (Hollenbaugh & Ferris, 2014) could be gratified
through social media use. However, Marwick (2012) sug-
gests that following users on social media without the aim of
maintaining or developing relationships can be a form of
social surveillance or voyeurism as depicted by Mäntymäki
and Islam (2014, 2016).
People use social media to obtain information about
others (Lampe, Ellison, & Steinfield, 2006). The informa-
tion gained helps them maintain interpersonal relation-
ships, as depicted by Seidman (2013), thus helping them
fulfill their need to belong (Baumeister & Leary, 1995).
Others use social media to meet like-minded individuals as
well as to receive companionship and social support
(Wellman & Gulia, 1999). However, Jung and Sundar
(2016) found that senior citizens over 60 years old used
social media, specifically Facebook, for social bonding,
social bridging, curiosity, and as a vehicle for responding
to family member requests. Joinson (2008) identified
seven motivations for Facebook use among college stu-
dents: social connection, shared identities, photographs,
content, social investigation, social network surfing,
and status updates. Additionally, the author found that
entertainment-related content motivated younger users to
spend more time on Facebook.
4
Social Media + Society
Whiting and Williams (2013) identified 10 motivations
for using social media: social interaction, information seek-
ing, passing time, entertainment, relaxation, communicatory
utility, convenience utility, expression of opinion, informa-
tion sharing, and surveillance or knowledge about others.
Comparing Facebook and Snapchat, Stanley (2015) found
that undergraduates more frequently use Snapchat than
Facebook and expressed motivations to increase networking
when joining Facebook as opposed to peer pressure and con-
tent appeal that drive Snapchat use. Stanley (2015) also
found a gender difference in U&G of Facebook and Snapchat.
Females were found to join Facebook and Snapchat in order
to monitor life of families and friends, whereas males join
Facebook to network and meet new people.
The earlier stages of investigating the U&G of social
media platforms, mostly in relation to Facebook use, have
centered on the social value of social media as it relates to
interacting and connecting with friends. For example, ear-
lier studies on Facebook showed that connecting and stay-
ing in touch with friends, family, and acquaintances;
maintaining social ties; and keeping up with old friends,
among other socially relevant motivations were the pri-
mary motives for using a platform like Facebook (Quan-
Haase & Young, 2010; Raacke & Bonds-Raacke, 2008).
However, over the past 12 years, the nature of Facebook, as
well as other social media platforms, evolved in such a
way where other motivations are advancing in salience.
Entertainment, medium appeal, and self-documentation
have become more prevalent and predictive of usage pat-
terns among Facebook users (Alhabash, Chiang, & Huang,
2014; Alhabash, Park, Kononova, Chiang, & Wise, 2012;
Karlis, 2013).
The nature of Twitter, with its limited 140-character
tweets, redefined the types of motivations and gratifications
that users seek. Liu, Cheung, and Lee (2010) found that
information sharing and social interaction were most predic-
tive of expressed intentions to continue using Twitter.
Similarly, Johnson and Yang (2009) found that information
sharing motivations were moderately correlated with time
spent on the site weekly and frequency of visits per week.
Park (2013) found that among opinion leaders on Twitter,
their motivations of information seeking, mobilization, and
public expression predicted their use of Twitter within a
political context.
Research on both Instagram and Snapchat is still in its
infancy due to the recent increase in adoption rates. Sheldon
and Bryant (2016) found that Instagram users place less
emphasis on connecting with other people and more on per-
sonal identity and self-promotion, in addition to other
motives, including surveillance and knowledge gathering
about others, documentation of life events and general cool-
ness, which includes self-promotion and displaying creativ-
ity such as photography skills. This particular study found
that surveillance was the strongest motivation for Instagram
usage.
With regard to Snapchat, Waddell (2016) indicated that
Snapchat’s recordability affordance feature provides gratifi-
cation of maintaining privacy while the modality affordance
feature offers users better opportunities for self-expression
than text-based communication technologies. The photo-
graphs were also found to afford users capacity to establish
and maintain connections with family members, friends, or
significant others regardless of the geographical distance.
Utz et al. (2015) found that participants were more inclined
to send humorous snaps (photos or videos) as well as selfies
(photos or videos of themselves). In comparing the motiva-
tions to use Snapchat and Facebook, Utz et al. (2015) found
that distraction or procrastination was the highest motivation
to use Snapchat, while maintaining social connection was the
highest for Facebook. Finally, Utz et al. (2015) found that
Snapchat use is associated with higher feelings of jealousy
compared to Facebook. Piwek and Joinson (2016) found that
Snapchat users primarily use it to communicate with close
friends and family members, thus highlighting the impor-
tance of private communication. Additionally, a few studies
highlighted the differentiating factors about Snapchat use
in that it affords more personal and private communication
with close friends and family with lower emphasis on self-
presentation and impression management (Bayer, Ellison,
Schoenbeck, & Falk, 2015; Piwek & Joinson, 2016;
Vaterlaus, Barnett, Roche, & Young, 2016).
Past literature points to a number of observations about
the overall view of the U&G of social media platforms. First,
past research suggests that affordances and functionality of
each platform yield a unique set of motivations and gratifica-
tions sought and obtained through platform use. Second, as
sociotechnical systems evolve and strive for continued rein-
vigoration by updating their design and functionality, moti-
vations and usage patterns also change. Third, while each
platform has unique features and motivations for using it,
there could be common and complimentary motivations
across platforms.
Considering the limited number of studies that compare
U&G across different social media platforms (Stanley, 2015),
this study aims to explore cross-platform differences in use
intensity, time spent daily on the platform, and use motiva-
tions. Past research has operationalized Facebook use with
the Facebook intensity scale (e.g., Ellison, Steinfield, &
Lampe, 2007), which includes a set of affective and cogni-
tive attitudinal measures of Facebook use as well as refer-
ence to the number of Facebook friends and time spent on the
platform. In this study, we define Facebook intensity in
exclusion of the number of Facebook friends and time spent
daily on it and focused on defining intensity as it related to
the evaluative component of Facebook use (cognitive and
affective). We asked the following questions:
RQ1. What are the differences, if any, in use intensity,
time spent daily, and motivations to use Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat?
Alhabash and Ma
5
RQ2. How do motivations to use Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, and Snapchat and time spent daily on the plat-
form predict the intensity of platform use?
Method
Sample
To answer the study’s research questions, we conducted a
cross-sectional survey of college students (N = 396), recruited
through a student subject pool at Michigan State University.
Participants were recruited online and completed the survey
anonymously via Qualtrics.com and received course or extra
credit for participation. A total of 33 participants were
excluded for failing quality control check questions, thus
reducing the sample size to 363 participants. A larger propor-
tion of the sample identified as female (64.6%), with a mean
age of about 22 years (SD = 2.98 years), and mostly White
(79.3%). With regard to having active accounts on the four
social media platforms, 97.2% reported having an account
on Facebook, 79.1% on Twitter, 87.1% on Instagram, and
84.3% on Snapchat. For cross-platform analyses, we only
used participants who indicated they had active accounts on
all four platforms, which reduced the sample size to 240 for
certain statistical analyses.
Operational Measures
All scale items used in this study were measured using a
seven-point Likert-type scale anchored by “Strongly
Disagree” to “Strongly Agree.” A detailed list of all items is
provided in Appendix. To measure the intensity of using
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, we used six
items adapted from Ellison et al.’s (2007). We also asked par-
ticipants to indicate the amount of time they spent daily on
each of the platforms using two drop-down menus: one for
hours per day and another for minutes per day that were com-
bined into overall minutes per day. As for motivations to use
each platform, we used Liu et al.’s (2010) list of motivations.
In total, we asked participants to express their agreement/
disagreement with statements pertaining to the following
motivations for information sharing (three items), self-docu-
mentation (three items), social interaction (three items),
entertainment (two items), passing time (three items), self-
expression (two items), medium appeal (one item), and con-
venience (two items). Additionally, we asked participants to
indicate the number of friends/followers they have on the
platform. Specific to Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, we
also asked participants to indicate the number of users that
the participants follow on the platforms. For all questions
related to the number of friends or followers, participants
were instructed to enter the number using an open-ended
question. Averaged variables were created for multi-item
construct following satisfactory factor and reliability analy-
sis results (see Appendix). Additionally, we included demo-
graphic control variables, where we asked participants to
indicate their sex (male vs. female), age by indicating their
birth year, ethnic background (multiple choice question:
Asian, Black/African American, Native American/Alaska
Native, and White), and class standing (freshman, sopho-
more, junior, senior, MA student, PhD student, and other).
Results
Cross-Platform Differences
Research question 1 inquired about the differences between
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat in terms of use
intensity, time spent daily, and motivations to use each plat-
form. To answer this research question, data for each mea-
sure of interest (time spent, use intensity, and nine
motivations) were submitted to a four (platform)-repeated
measures analysis of variance (ANOVA). Results are sum-
marized in Table 1.
Results show that participants spent the greatest amount of
time on Instagram (M = 108.73, SD = 101.55), followed by
Snapchat (M = 107.15, SD = 106.47), Facebook (M = 106.35,
SD = 94.65), and Twitter (M = 88.92, SD = 104.14), respectively,
2
F(3, 223) = 3.37, p < .05, η p
(see Figure 1). Pairwise
04= .
comparisons showed that the difference between Twitter and
Instagram was significant (p < .05) and that between Twitter
and Snapchat approached significance (p = .057), while the
other pairwise differences were not significant.
As for the intensity to use each platform, participants
expressed the highest intensity to use Snapchat (M = 5.07,
SD = 1.44), followed by Instagram (M = 5.06, SD = 1.56),
Facebook (M = 4.49, SD = 1.41) and Twitter (M = 4.22,
2
SD = 1.83), respectively, F(3, 237) = 24.43, p < .001, η p
24= .
(see Figure 2). Pairwise comparisons showed that all cross-
platform differences were significant (p < .05) except for the
difference between Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and
Snapchat.
Results showed that all motivations, except for informa-
tion sharing, were significantly different across the four
social media platforms. Results are summarized in Table 1
and Figure 3; thus, we will limit this report to highlighting
trends and similarities across motivations. A trend in the
prevalence of use motivations related to self-documentation,
social interaction, entertainment, passing time, and conve-
nience emerged across the four platforms. Snapchat takes the
lead in these five motivations, followed by Instagram,
Facebook, and Twitter, respectively. With regard to self-
expression motivations, we see that Instagram slightly leads,
followed by Snapchat, Twitter, then Facebook, respectively.
Snapchat takes the lead for medium appeal, followed by
Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, respectively.
Predicting Use Intensity Across Platforms
Research question 2 deals with exploring the ways in which
the nine motivations to use each of the four platforms and
time spent on the site predict the intensity of using Facebook,