Constant notifications, messages and reminders can leave social media users feeling drained. Researchers increasingly study this kind of digital fatigue, but they often assume that the questionnaires they use mean the same thing in every country. A new international study suggests that assumption needs more care.
Researchers at the University of Cape Coast, Anadolu University, Gaziantep University, the Education University of Hong Kong and National Cheng Kung University tested two widely used scales on 1,323 university students. The findings appear in BMC Psychology. Students took part in Türkiye, Hong Kong and Ghana, with between 410 and 475 in each country.
The first scale measures social overload, the sense of being burdened by friends’ demands for attention, support and replies online. The second measures exhaustion from social networking sites, meaning the mental and emotional tiredness that builds up from heavy use. Students in Ghana reported the most time online, averaging more than eight hours a day on their phones and over five hours on social media.
Overall, both scales worked well. Each measured a single main idea and gave reliable scores in all three countries. One item about congratulating online friends on their birthdays, prompted by reminders, fitted poorly, perhaps because birthday customs vary so much between cultures.
The more detailed checks told a subtler story. Several questions, especially on the social overload scale, were answered differently in different countries even by students with the same overall level of overload. This means that comparing raw scores across countries could give a misleading picture of who is most affected.
The team also tested a simple chain of cause and effect. In Hong Kong and Türkiye, pressure to stay constantly available online was linked to social overload, which in turn was linked to exhaustion. In Ghana, that middle step did not hold. The pattern stayed the same after removing the problem item and after allowing for age, gender and daily screen time.
The findings matter because digital wellbeing research increasingly guides advice for schools, universities and app designers. If a questionnaire works differently across cultures, claims that social media causes the same harm everywhere may be premature. The team recommends that researchers check each question before comparing countries, rather than relying on overall reliability alone.
The study has limits. All participants were university students, and the data came from a single point in time, so the results cannot show what causes what. Each country also used a different way of collecting answers, online in two countries and on paper in Ghana, so these differences cannot be fully separated from cultural ones.
Interest in social media fatigue has grown as more of daily life moves online. This study suggests that the strain of being always connected is real, but that the way it is experienced may depend on where people live.
