Psychometric modeling of the pervasive use of Facebook through psychophysiological measures: Stress or optimal experience?

• Only a limited number of studies have investigated users’ experiences with Facebook in mobile and laboratory settings.
• The study use psychophysiological responses to understand if Facebook elicit stress or provide an optimal experience.
• The study showed preliminary results which have a crucial importance for further studies with higher ecological validity.

Social network sites have been studied extensively with an aim to understand users’ experience during their use. Facebook is the most frequently used social network site, with more than one billion active users. However, despite 819 million of active Facebook users currently accessing it using their mobile device, only a limited number of studies have investigated their experiences with Facebook. Our goal was to objectively verify in an experimental setting the subjective experience of users accessing Facebook through a PC and through a smart phone, which has a higher pervasiveness. Psychophysiological correlates of 28 subjects were measured using wearable biosensors, which record signals through an electrocardiogram; a 14-channel Electroencephalogram; facial Electromyography; an Electrooculogram, and a chest Respiration strip. An accurate signal processing permitted to compute twenty psychophysiological measures for the statistical analysis. The results showed significant patterns in arousal, valence, attention, and anxiety, indicating a subjects’ engagement during Facebook navigation, which was also more evident during the mobile session, suggesting an optimal experience during the pervasive use of Facebook. Some hypotheses and the directions for future studies are presented, in particular, the suggestion to make further studies with higher ecological validity, outside the lab, to assess the ubiquitous use of Facebook.