In the increasingly user-generated Web, users’ personality traits may be crucial factors leading them to
engage in this participatory media. The literature suggests factors such as extraversion, emotional stability
and openness to experience are related to uses of social applications on the Internet. Using a national
sample of US adults, this study investigated the relationship between these three dimensions of the Big-
Five model and social media use (defined as use of social networking sites and instant messages). It also
examined whether gender and age played a role in that dynamic. Results revealed that while extraversion
and openness to experiences were positively related to social media use, emotional stability was a negative
predictor, controlling for socio-demographics and life satisfaction. These findings differed by gender
and age. While extraverted men and women were both likely to be more frequent users of social media
tools, only the men with greater degrees of emotional instability were more regular users. The relationship
between extraversion and social media use was particularly important among the young adult
cohort. Conversely, being open to new experiences emerged as an important personality predictor of
social media use for the more mature segment of the sample.