Reflecting on 1,000 Social Media Journeys: Generational Patterns in Platform Transition

2026-02-17

AI Summary

This study addresses the limited understanding of users’ motivations for migrating across social media platforms and their holistic usage trajectories, which hinders explanations of platform preferences and generational differences. To bridge this gap, the work proposes a conceptual framework termed the “social media journey” and employs a mixed-methods approach with quota sampling to collect data from 1,000 U.S. users. For the first time, it models multi-platform engagement as an integrated experience, moving beyond the constraints of single-platform studies. The research identifies key push and pull factors driving platform migration and uncovers generational variations in need-based adoption patterns. These findings offer an integrative analytical paradigm for human-computer interaction (HCI) research and provide novel, generation-informed insights for platform design and governance.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Social Cognition And Interaction
• Humans and AI: Intelligent User Interfaces

Application Category

• Social Networks and Social Media: Generative AI / large language models and their impact on social systems
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Social recommender systems and personalization for the social Web
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Content-based information diffusion

Abstract

Social media has billions of users, but we still do not fully understand why users prefer one platform over another. Establishing new platforms among already popular competitors is difficult. Prior research has richly documented people's experiences within individual platforms, yet situating those experiences within the entirety of a user's social media experience remains challenging. What platforms have people used, and why have they transitioned between them? We collected data from a quota-based sample of 1,000 U.S. participants. We introduce the concept of \emph{Social Media Journeys} to study the entirety of their social media experiences systematically. We identify push and pull factors across the social media landscape. We also show how different generations adopted social media platforms based on personal needs. With this work, we advance HCI by moving towards holistic perspectives when discussing social media technology, offering new insights for platform design, governance, and regulation.

Problem

• social media journeys
• platform transition
• user preference
• generational patterns
• social media adoption

Innovation

• Social Media Journeys
• platform transition
• generational patterns
• push and pull factors
• holistic perspective