Our model shows that engaging with friends through tagging and apps is positively associated with both frequency of Facebook use and an individual’s emotional attachment to Facebook. This finding highlights the socialvalue that individuals place on being able to interact with their friends through SNSs. Past research has linked frequency of use and emotional attachment to Facebook to beneficial social outcomes for Facebook users, such as higher levels of social capital (Ellison et al., 2007), increased self-esteem, and a heightened sense of well-being
(Burke et al., 2010; Ellison et al., 2011). Similarly, past research has linked passive consumption of information on Facebook without interactions among friends to lower levels of social capital and loneliness (Burke et al., 2010).Transitively, this suggests that higher levels of engagement with friends through tagging and apps are likely to translate
into social benefits for SNS users. From a design perspective, integrating more interactive features, similar to tagging and apps that promote direct engagement with one’s friends on social networking platforms, may increase SNS users’ frequency of use and emotional attachment to an SNS. Because tagging and app engagement are only two ways to directly engage Facebook users with their friends, other means, such as encouraging commenting or likes, could also
be explored in future research.