Turning Lemons into Lemonade: Social Support as a Moderator of the Relationship Between Technostress and Quality of Life Among University Students

Khalid Mehmood,1 Aamir Suhail,2 Pradeep Kautish,3 Muhammad Mohsin Hakeem,4 Md Rashid5 1Research Center of Hubei Micro & Small Enterprises Development, School of Economics and Management, Hubei Engineering University, Xiaogan, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Management and Leadership, Business School, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Guadalajara, Mexico; 3Department of Marketing, Institute of Management, Nirma University, Ahmedabad, India; 4NUCB Business School, Nagoya University of Commerce and Business, Nagoya, Japan; 5Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, IndiaCorrespondence: Md Rashid, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India, Email rashidgeog@gmail.com Pradeep Kautish, Institute of Management, Nirma University, Ahmedabad, India, Email pradeep.kautish@nirmauni.ac.inPurpose: The overuse of internet-based technologies as a means of coping with the stress they generate has resulted in an alarming level of addiction, adversely impacting the quality of life and overall health of younger individuals. This social detachment, in turn, contributes to both physical and mental health deterioration. The potential remedy for this predicament lies in the application of social support as an antidote to internet addiction. In this context, our present study employs the Stress-Strain-Outcome model to explore the indirect effects of internet addiction and the moderating role of social support in relation to the influence of technostress on the quality of life of adults.Methods: We adopted a time-lagged design to collect data from university graduates and evaluated our study hypotheses using Mplus.Results: Our empirical findings highlight the significant influence of technostress on internet addiction, with the latter significantly mediating the relationship between technostress and quality of life. Furthermore, our results reveal that social support effectively moderates the indirect effects of technostress on quality of life through its impact on internet addiction.Conclusion: These findings can help researchers and educators better understand the underlying mechanisms between technostress and quality of life with social support as the silver lining. This form of social support holds the potential not only to alleviate internet addiction but also to positively enhance the quality of life and overall wellbeing of individuals facing these challenges. The implications of these findings and avenues for future research are also discussed.Keywords: internet addiction, quality of life, social support, technostress, social media, moderation-mediation