Communication fatigue and self-escape: a study on the use behavior of "peeling off life" in WeChat Moments

Abstract

Under the COVID-19 pandemic, people's social life is more dependent on social media, while the content of WeChat Moments is "peeling off life". Based on the social media fatigue theory, this study uses questionnaires and semi-structured interviews to explore the reasons for the "peeling off life" of the Moments and its impact on users' real social behavior. This paper argues that online marketing flooding has led to changes in users' cognition of platform functions, while the increase in the proportion of online social behaviors has exacerbated users' avoidance of interpersonal relationship maintenance, indirectly contributed to the reduction of users' emotional expression, and thus led to the birth of users' social anxiety in the real world.