Montag Christian, Becker Benjamin, Gan Chunmei
Molecular Psychology, Institute of Psychology and Education, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany.
neuSCAN Laboratory, The Clinical Hospital of Chengdu Brain Science Institute, MOE Key Laboratory for Neuroinformation, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.
Front Psychol. 2018 Dec 11;9:2247. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02247. eCollection 2018.
With currently over one billion monthly active users, the Chinese social media and multipurpose application WeChat (, , micro-message) has become one of the world's most popular social media platforms. Despite its enormous number of users in Asia, WeChat is still not well known in Western countries. Against this background, the present review aims to provide the reader with a comprehensive overview on the functionality of this application, comparison with other popular applications such as Facebook/WhatsApp and previous research. Although WeChat has become an integral part of everyday life for many users, research has only recently begun to examine the impact of this development on the societal and individual levels. The present review summarizes the literature on this topic with a focus on the motives to engage in using the app and potential detrimental effects of excessive use. In the context of the growing popularity and increasing usage times of the app - in particular in Asian countries - future research seems warranted to examine systematically how social media platforms such as WeChat will affect interpersonal communication behavior, well-being, and mental health. The direct comparison of WeChat's influence on the mentioned variables compared with its competitors Facebook and WhatsApp often used in Western countries will also be of high importance.
中国社交媒体及多功能应用程序微信目前每月有超过10亿活跃用户，已成为全球最受欢迎的社交媒体平台之一。尽管在亚洲拥有庞大用户群体，但微信在西方国家仍鲜为人知。在此背景下，本综述旨在为读者全面概述该应用程序的功能，与Facebook/WhatsApp等其他流行应用程序进行比较，并介绍以往的相关研究。尽管微信已成为许多用户日常生活中不可或缺的一部分，但相关研究直到最近才开始探讨这一发展对社会层面和个人层面的影响。本综述总结了关于这一主题的文献，重点关注使用该应用程序的动机以及过度使用可能产生的不利影响。鉴于该应用程序日益普及且使用时长不断增加，尤其是在亚洲国家，未来有必要进行系统研究，以考察微信等社交媒体平台将如何影响人际沟通行为、幸福感和心理健康。将微信对上述变量的影响与西方国家常用的竞争对手Facebook和WhatsApp进行直接比较也具有重要意义。
