Impact of new media use on user's personality traits

摘要

With rapid development of internet technology, new media has exerted more and more influence on user's personality. This research studies how new media use affects user's personality traits. Through sampling in Shanghai and applying structural equation model to the data, the study explored the path of influence and concluded that new-media use has significant positive effect on extraversion, openness and agreeableness through the sense of belonging, and has significant negative effect on their emotional stability and conscientiousness through self-monitoring. Additionally, the user's gender significantly moderates the relationship between new-media use and sense of belonging, as the relationship means more for female than for male. Finally, the article suggests some measures and proposals about management of new media.