Beyond the Scroll: Unmasking the Simultaneous Role of Psychosomatic and Stressors Behind Social Media Users’ Disempowerment and Disengagement

Social media engagement affects billions globally yet paradoxically correlates with psychological distress while one-third of users intend to reduce usage. The mechanisms driving digital disengagement remain undertheorized, particularly beyond Western contexts. This study empirically validates an integrated Conservation of Resources theory model examining how intrinsic stressors (social comparison, privacy concerns) and extrinsic stressors (social overload, information overload) relate to digital disengagement through two simultaneous mediators: disempowerment and psychosomatic tension. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 1,500 Indonesian social media users (aged 18–35, tenure ≤10 years). Data were analyzed using variance-based structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) with 5,000 bootstrap resamples. All hypotheses received empirical support. Both intrinsic and extrinsic stressors were significantly associated with disempowerment and psychosomatic tension. Critically, both mediators operated simultaneously with comparable magnitudes (total indirect effects: disempowerment = 0.706; psychosomatic tension = 0.712). The integrated model explained 67% of the variance in digital disengagement. The findings provide robust empirical validation of COR theory within the novel context of digital disengagement, demonstrating that resource depletion manifests across multiple psychological domains concurrently. While causal inference is limited by the cross-sectional design, results offer foundational insights for platform designers, clinicians, and policymakers, with recommendations framed as hypotheses requiring further longitudinal testing. • Dual-pathway mediation model reveals disempowerment and psychosomatic tension equally drive social media disengagement (both β=0.71) • First empirical validation of COR Theory's cascading resource-depletion mechanism across simultaneous psychological domains • Indonesian context study (N=1,500) demonstrates cross-dimensional effects: intrinsic stressors activate both control-loss and stress pathways • Integrated model explains 67% of digital disengagement variance, substantially exceeding literature standards (R 2 =0.35-0.50) • Platform stressors operate through parallel mechanisms: information overload most potent for psychosomatic tension (β=0.52), social comparison drives disempowerment (β=0.41)