[Paper Review] Flow on Social Media? Rarer Than You'd Think

Michael Thomas Knierim, Thimo Schulz+5 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Feb 18, 2026

Flow Experience in Various Fields0 citations

TL;DR

A five-day field study combining smartphone app-tracking and Day Reconstruction Method shows flow is rarely induced by social media, and heavier use predicts fewer flow experiences.

ABSTRACT

Researchers often attribute social media's appeal to its ability to elicit flow experiences of deep absorption and effortless engagement. Yet prolonged use has also been linked to distraction, fatigue, and lower mood. This paradox remains poorly understood, in part because prior studies rely on habitual or one-shot reports that ask participants to directly attribute flow to social media. To address this gap, we conducted a five-day field study with 40 participants, combining objective smartphone app tracking with daily reconstructions of flow-inducing activities. Across 673 reported flow occurrences, participants rarely associated flow with social media (2 percent). Instead, heavier social media use predicted fewer daily flow occurrences. We further examine this relationship through the effects of social media use on fatigue, mood, and motivation. Altogether, our findings suggest that flow and social media may not align as closely as assumed - and might even compete - underscoring the need for further research.

Motivation & Objective

• Investigate how often social media use is spontaneously identified as flow-inducing in daily life.
• Examine whether social media use meaningfully contributes to daily flow.
• Explore psychological states (fatigue, readiness) that accompany or explain links between social media use and flow.
• Decouple objective social media activity from subjective flow experiences using telemetry and DRM.
• Clarify whether flow on social media aligns with authentic flow as per Csikszentmihalyi’s theory.

Proposed method

• Conduct a five-day longitudinal field study with 40 participants.
• Collect continuous smartphone app usage data focusing on social media applications.
• Use an adapted Day Reconstruction Method (DRM) with three daily reflections to identify flow-inducing activities.
• Differentiate active versus passive social media use at the app-category level.
• Apply mixed-effects models to assess within- and between-person effects of social media use on flow and related states.
• Report flow using a 7-point Flow Short Scale for each reported activity.

Figure 1. Overview of the study design: participants completed an onboarding session followed by three daily reflection surveys (morning, before noon, evening) across five study days.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 RQ1: How prevalently do people spontaneously identify social media use as flow-inducing in daily life?
• RQ2 RQ2: Does social media use meaningfully add to people’s daily tally of flow?
• RQ3 RQ3: What psychological states (e.g., readiness, fatigue) accompany or explain the link between social media use and flow?

Key findings

• Flow on social media is rare: only 2.1% of flow reports were connected to social media activities.
• Greater daily social media use, especially passive use, predicts fewer flow reports within individuals.
• Active social media use shows no reliable association with flow.
• Readiness positively predicts flow within individuals, whereas fatigue shows weaker or inconsistent associations.
• Within-person increases in social media use relate to lower readiness, which in turn relates to reduced flow; between-person patterns show heavier users having higher average readiness.
• Overall, readiness emerges as the more plausible pathway between social media use and flow, with evidence being correlational.

Figure 2. Screenshot of the adapted Day Reconstruction Method (DRM) survey used to capture flow activities.