The ways people estimate and make sense of the time they spend with social media should be influenced by the subjective construals that they draw on to guide their perceptions and behaviors on social media. Through qualitative analysis of 60 interviews, we identify how subjective construals of social media can influence two distinct processes relevant to the study of social media effects. First, we find that the process of estimating and self-reporting time spent on social media is influenced by differences in how people construed “social media” in field-standard questions. Conceptual variability in definitions of “social media,” aggregated time spent across multiple sessions and platforms, and perceived norms about use affected their responses. Second, we find that participants’ reasoning about the role of social media in their lives revolved around two key construals about the valence of its effects (positive vs negative) and their perceived agency relative to social media (being in control vs subject to control). People who felt in control of their use also viewed social media more positively, and those who felt controlled by social media viewed it more negatively. These conceptualizations of the nature and effects of social media use—which we discuss as social media mindsets—were closely tied to behaviors and outcomes. These two findings have fundamental implications not only for survey methodologies in social media research but also for how we conceptualize the relationship between social media use and psychological outcomes.

人们估计和理解他们在社交媒体上花费的时间的方式应该受到他们用来指导他们在社交媒体上的看法和行为的主观解释的影响。通过对 60 次访谈的定性分析，我们确定了社交媒体的主观解释如何影响与社交媒体效应研究相关的两个不同过程。首先，我们发现估计和自我报告在社交媒体上花费的时间的过程受到人们在现场标准问题中如何理解“社交媒体”的差异的影响。“社交媒体”定义的概念差异、在多个会话和平台上花费的总时间以及关于使用的感知规范影响了他们的反应。第二，我们发现参与者对社交媒体在他们生活中的作用的推理围绕着两个关键的解释，即其影响的效价（积极与消极）以及他们相对于社交媒体的感知能动性（控制与受控制）。感觉可以控制自己使用的人也更积极地看待社交媒体，而感觉被社交媒体控制的人则更消极地看待社交媒体。这些关于社交媒体使用的性质和影响的概念化——我们将其讨论为社交媒体心态——与行为和结果密切相关。这两项发现不仅对社交媒体研究中的调查方法具有根本意义，而且对我们如何概念化社交媒体使用与心理结果之间的关系也具有根本意义。