Figure 1.

An example of social media task stimuli, few likes condition.

Note: During the three-minute online interaction, participants were instructed to interact with eleven other people seemingly same-age peers, who were in fact controlled by pre-programmed computer scripts. Participant’s profile was always displayed on the top left corner, whereas others’ profiles were randomly displayed. When people received a like from another person, it updated the total number of likes below each profile, popped up a green notification window at the bottom left corner of the screen, and changed the rank order on the ranking board at the right corner, all of which made the experience of receiving likes highly salient.