With the surging reliance on videoconferencing tools, users may find themselves staring at their reflections for hours a day.We refer to this phenomenon as self-referential information (SRI) consumption and examine its consequences and the mechanism behind them.Building on self-awareness research and the strength model of self-control, we argue that SRI consumption heightens the state of self-awareness and thereby depletes participants' mental resources, eventually undermining virtual meeting (VM) outcomes.Our findings from a European employee sample revealed contrary effects of SRI consumption across speaker vs listener roles.Engagement with self-view is positively associated with self-awareness, which, in turn, is negatively related to satisfaction with VM process, perceived productivity, and enjoyment.Looking at the self while listening to others exhibits adverse direct and indirect (via selfawareness) effects on VM outcomes.However, looking at the self when speaking exhibits positive direct effects on satisfaction with VM process and enjoyment.

Widespread on social networking sites (SNSs), envy has been linked to an array of detrimental outcomes for users’ well-being. While envy has been considered a status-related emotion and is likely to be experienced in response to perceiving another’s higher status, there is a lack of research exploring how status perceptions influence the emergence of envy on SNSs. This is important because SNSs typically quantify social interactions and reach with metrics that indicate users’ relative rank and status in the network. To understand how status perceptions impact SNS users, we introduce a new form of metric-based digital status rooted in SNS metrics that are available and visible on a platform. Drawing on social comparison theory and status literature, we conducted an online experiment to investigate how different forms of status contribute to the proliferation of envy on SNSs. Our findings shed light on how metric-based digital status influences feelings of envy on SNSs. Specifically, we could show that metric-based digital status impacts envy through increasing perceptions of others’ socioeconomic and sociometric statuses. Our study contributes to the growing discourse on the negative outcomes associated with SNS use and its consequences for users and society.

Given the rising popularity of social networking sites (SNSs), the influence of these platforms on the subjective well-being (SWB) of their users is an emerging topic in information systems research. Building on the norm of reciprocity and the social functional approach to positive emotions, we posit that targeted reciprocity-evoking forms of SNS activities are best suited to promote users’ positive emotions. The favourable potential of these activities is likely to be particularly pronounced among adolescents who pay special attention to social acceptance, which can be channelled with the help of reciprocal communication. Therefore, we conducted a quantitative 7-day diary study of 162 adolescent Facebook users attending German schools, looking at the impact of their daily SNS activities on their SWB. Based on a linear mixed model analysis, our results confirm a positive link between targeted reciprocity-evoking activities – such as chatting, giving and receiving feedback – and adolescents’ positive emotions. Our findings provide a reassuring perspective on the implications of the sociotechnical design of SNS communication channels. Specifically, by encouraging targeted activities, providers, users, and other stakeholders can ensure the beneficial impact of this technology on users’ SWB.