Page 137 - Never Too Far Away? The Roles of Social Network Sites in Sojourners’ Adjustment

one’s romantic partner or network members in a romantic relationship context (Chapters 4 and 5). Depending on who they interacted with, the roles of SNS could vary, ranging from beneficial, benign, to detrimental.
Host- versus home-country networks. With the advancement of communication technologies, one of the purported implications of CMC and SNS use in sojourners’ experiences is greater connection to both the home- and the host-country networks (Dekker & Engbersen, 2014; Diminescu, 2008). Thus, Chapters 2 and 3 considered three contexts of social interactions: SNS interactions with the home- and the host-country networks, and face-to-face interaction with the host-country network. A key finding in this dissertation is that the host- country network played a more crucial role in sojourners’ adjustment compared to the home-country network. SNS interactions with the host-country network were shown to impact sojourners’ psychological and sociocultural adjustment, albeit oppositional, via perceived social support (Chapter 2) and homesickness (Chapter 3). SNS interaction with the home-country network was not associated with any of the subjective outcomes.
SNS interaction with the host-country network could be a double-edged sword for sojourners’ adjustment. It could be both problematic and beneficial in terms of impact on subjective outcomes: On the one hand, increased SNS interaction with the host-country network lowered perceived social support over time, which, in turn, decreased psychological adjustment. On the other hand, increased SNS interaction with the host-country network decreased sojourners’ homesickness both in the short- and the long-term, which, in turn, facilitated sociocultural adjustment.
In previous studies, the negative impact of Internet and social media use on support and wellbeing was often interpreted as a function of social isolation based on the assumption that online interactions displace “real life” interactions (Muusses, Finkenauer, Kerkhof, & Billedo, 2014; Primack et al., 2017; Shakya & Christakis, 2016). In this dissertation, it was demonstrated that SNS use does not necessarily displace face-to-face interaction (Dienlin et al., 2017). Thus, it is likely that it is not social isolation, but certain characteristics and dynamics of SNS interaction itself, that could make sojourners perceive the host-country network as a less viable source of support in the long-term. It is possible that over time, sojourners realize that SNS interactions do not necessarily translate to offline support (Li, Chen, & Popiel, 2015). Moreover, it could be that SNS interactions elicit social comparison with the members of their host-country
General Discussion 135