Research and practice have mostly focused on the “bright side” of social media, aiming to understand and help in leveraging the manifold opportunities afforded by this technology. However, it is increasingly observable that social media present enormous risks for individuals, communities, firms, and even for society as a whole. Examples for this “dark side” of social media include cyberbullying, addictive use, trolling, online witch hunts, fake news, and privacy abuse. In this article, we aim to illustrate the multidimensionality of the dark side of social media and describe the related various undesirable outcomes. To do this, we adapt the established social media honeycomb framework to explain the dark side implications of each of the seven functional building blocks: conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, groups, and identity. On the basis of these reflections, we present a number of avenues for future research, so as to facilitate a better understanding and use of social media. © ۲۰۱۸ Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Introduction

Over the past decade, social media have been transforming how individuals, communities, and organizations create, share, and consume information from each other and from firms. What appeals to almost 90% of the younger EU citizens (Eurostat, 2017a) is how social media differ from traditional media (e.g., newspaper and television) in terms of their reach, interactivity, usability, and ubiquity. In 2017, users spent more than 2 hours on average per day on social networks and messaging services (half an hour each day longer than five years earlier), which amounted to about one third of their entire daily computer time (Mander, 2017). Many studies have touted the advantages that social media would bring to individuals and firms (e.g., Kumar, Bezawada, Rishika, Janakiraman, & Kannan, 2016; Sabate, Berbegal-Mirabent, Canabate, ~ & Lebherz, 2014; Wagner, 2017). They highlight the “bright side of social media” and how engagement between firms and consumers is being democratized (Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy, & Silvestre, 2011). For firms, this means social media would improve marketing, public relations, customer service, product development, personnel decision-making, and other business activities that rely on information exchanges and engagement with consumers and employees. Many of these advantages have materialized, thus leading almost 50% of all EU firms to use at least one form of social media in 2017 (Eurostat, 2017b). These firms use social media to not only broadcast company content but also track sentiment worldwide by analyzing usergenerated content (Paniagua, Korzynski, & Mas-Tur, 2017), consumer-generated intellectual property (Berthon, Pitt, Kietzmann, & McCarthy, 2015), and interactions on social networking sites (Wagner, Baccarella, & Voigt, 2017), to adjust their business and marketing strategies appropriately. Regardless of the numerous opportunities social media offer, an increasing number of incidents demonstrate that there is undoubtedly a “dark side” to social media. Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive, recently stated that he regrets that some of the tools he has helped to create “are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works” (Wong, 2017). This quote vividly illustrates how the qualities that underlie the enormous presence of social media platforms are now also undermining the freedoms and the well-being of the individuals and communities they serve. For example, there have been an increasing number of reports and research attention into concerns such as cyberbullying (O’Keeffe & Clarke-Pearson, 2011), trolling (Buckels, Trapnell, & Paulhus, 2014; Hardaker, 2010), privacy invasions (Pai & Arnott, 2013), fake news (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017; European Commission, 2018), online firestorms (Pfeffer, Zorbach, & Carley, 2014), and addictive use (Blackwell, Leaman, Tramposch, Osborne, & Liss, 2017). Furthermore, a 2017 survey found that Britons aged 14e24 believe that social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter, exacerbated self-consciousness and “fear of missing out” (Przybylski, Murayama, Dehaan, & Gladwell, 2013), which can result in increased levels of anxiety, sleep loss, and depression (e.g., Levenson, Shensa, Sidani, Colditz, & Primack, 2016). In the workplace, a recent study found that the benefits of social media also come with negative consequences through work-life conflicts and interruptions that increase exhaustion (van Zoonen, Verhoeven, & Vliegenthart, 2017).