Beyond the Scroll: Unmasking the Simultaneous Role of Psychosomatic and Stressors Behind Social Media Users’ Disempowerment and Disengagement

This study examines the mechanisms underlying digital disengagement among social media users by testing an integrated Conservation of Resources (COR) Theory model. It investigates how both intrinsic stressors (social comparison, privacy concerns) and extrinsic stressors (social overload, information overload) activate dual psychological pathways disempowerment and psychosomatic tension leading to platform disengagement. A quantitative, cross-sectional study was conducted with N = 1,500 Indonesian social media users (tenure ≤ 10 years, age 18–35). Data were collected via online survey and analyzed using variance-based structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS 4.0. Measurement validity was established through confirmatory factor analysis, and mediation pathways were tested via bootstrapping (5,000 resamples). All eight hypothesized relationships received empirical support (p < .001). Intrinsic and extrinsic stressors demonstrated significant direct effects on both disempowerment and psychosomatic tension. Both mediators independently predicted digital disengagement through simultaneous pathways with nearly equivalent indirect effects (disempowerment = 0.706; psychosomatic tension = 0.712). The integrated model explained 67% of disengagement variance, substantially exceeding typical effect sizes in digital stress literature (R² = 0.35–0.50). This study provides the first empirical validation of COR Theory's cascading-effect mechanism across simultaneous psychological domains in social media contexts. It advances beyond compartmentalized frameworks by demonstrating cross-dimensional effects and establishing that resource depletion operates through parallel, equally potent mechanisms rather than single pathways.