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Int. Commun. Chin. Cult (2019) 6(3):231–245 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40636-019-00160-2

Social media usage, acculturation and psychological well‑being: a study with Chinese in New Zealand

Xuan Du1 · Shengdong Lin1

Received: 30 March 2019 / Revised: 17 May 2019 / Accepted: 31 July 2019 / Published online: 8 August 2019 © Academy for International Communication of Chinese Culture 2019

Abstract This study examined the relationships between social media usage, acculturation and psychological well-being through a survey with 121 Chinese in New Zealand. The results showed that (1) higher use frequency of social media pop- ular in New Zealand (NZ social media) was associated with higher score on identif- cation with New Zealand (NZI) and lower score on identifcation with China (CNI), (2) the relationship between the use frequency of social media popular in CN (CN social media) and CNI or NZI was not statistically signifcant, (3) the use frequency of CN social media and NZ social media were signifcantly and positively corre- lated. (4) Both CNI and NZI were positively related to Happiness, but had no sig- nifcant relationship with Depression, (5) the relationship between NZ social media use and Happiness was positively mediated by NZI. Implications for working with Chinese migrants and for future research were discussed.

Keywords Host social media · Homeland social media · Acculturation · Psychological well-being · Chinese migrants

Introduction

Nearly 10 million Chinese migrants live outside of China, making up the fourth larg- est population of foreign-born migrants in the world (International Organization for Migration, IOM 2018). As an important destination for migrants, New Zealand has received 163,104 PRC-born Chinese, accounting for 34.6% of its Asian population (Statistics New Zealand 2014). Since the number of Chinese migrants around the

* Shengdong Lin [email protected]

1 School of Journalism and Communication, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China

Vol.:(0123456789)1 3 232 X. Du, S. Lin world is projected to keep growing, research on their acculturation becomes increas- ingly important. A growing body of literature has shown that social media plays a crucial role in migrants’ acculturation as they maintain links with their country of origin at the same time make new connections in a host country (Erdem 2018; Komito 2011; McGregor and Siegel 2013a, b). Prior research on Chinese migrants reached the conclusion that the use of social media popular in a host country could facilitate their acculturation process, but its efects on their culture heritage were not conclu- sive (Chen 2010; Mao and Qian 2015; Forbush and Foucault-Welles 2016; Cao and Zhang 2012). Overseas Chinese tend to use social media of host and home country at the same time, yet very few studies have set on the latter (Li and Chen 2014; Hang 2015; Chen 2017). This study is important because it explores the social media use patterns of Chinese in New Zealand and also takes an insight into how their use of CN social media and NZ social media afects their CNI and NZI. Acculturation is also viewed as a psychological process that can be very tough and closely related to the psychological well-being of migrants (Berry et al. 1987; Berry 2005; Jang et al. 2005; Chun and Choi 2003; Liebkind and Jasinskaja-Lahti 2000). An explicit review of literature indicated that the fndings on acculturation and psychological outcomes were not consistent (Balidemaj 2016). In this study, we attempt to clarify the relationship between host/home country identifcation and pos- itive/negative psychological well-being. Although much work has been done on the relationships between any two of social media use, acculturation and psychological well-being, there is a lack of research focusing on relationships between the three variables (Li et al. 2013). In order to have a better understanding on the relationships between them, we further investigate acculturation as a mediator in the relationships between social media use and psychological well-being.

Literature review

Acculturation

Berry and colleagues defned acculturation as “the dual process of cultural and psy- chological change that takes place as a result of contact between two or more cul- tural groups and their members” (Berry 2005). A number of researchers have theo- rized about the dimensions of acculturation, and the competing unidirectional and bidirectional approaches dominate acculturation research (Cabassa 2003). Accul- turation was initially considered as a unidirectional process in which the migrants have to disregard their culture heritage and receive the dominant culture in host country (Gordon 1964). However, in recent years the bilinear model of accultura- tion is becoming more widely accepted (Du 2012). Migrants do not necessarily lose identifcation with culture of their country of origin even if they establish identifca- tion with the dominant culture (Li and Tsai 2015). The acculturation model devel- oped by Berry has been recognized as a major contribution to the study of bidirec- tional acculturation. In this model, Berry cast the acquisition of dominant culture 1 3 Social media usage, acculturation and psychological… 233 and retention of culture heritage as two independent dimensions (Berry et al. 1986; Berry 2003; Schwartz et al. 2010). By combining Berry’s model with their theo- rizing of psychological and sociocultural adaptation in sojourners, Ward and col- leagues invented Acculturation Index (AI) measuring ethnic individual’s identifca- tion with both host and home country (Ward and Kennedy 1994). In the present study, we adopt the bidirectional approach to explore how Chinese in New Zealand identify with China and New Zealand.

Social media

Social media was defned by Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) as “a group of Internet- based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content”. This concept of social media thus not only refers to Social Networking Sites such as Facebook, but also content communities such as YouTube, forums and weblogs (Dekker and Engbersen 2013). China Internet Network Information Center, CINIC (2017) classifed social applications in China into three categories: (1) instant mes- saging applications which are mainly used for communication and interaction, (2) comprehensive social applications where users can present themselves and meet oth- ers, (3) vertical social applications that can meet users’ certain needs like marriage and dating. Besides, video platforms were found to be closely related to these social applications because of their importance in improving user stickiness and interac- tion frequency. In the present study, we select the social media in China and New Zealand based on the broad defnition and classifcation stated above. Media and acculturation studies has been traditionally conducted from the per- spectives of ethnic media (media by and for ethnics in a host country with content in ethnic languages) and host media (mainstream media in the host country) (Shi 2009; Kim 1977). The advent of Internet technologies such as social media broke the boundaries of media. Recent studies on social media and acculturation are mainly based on the languages involved in using social media (Li and Tsai 2015). How- ever, many scholars argue that language is not a necessary element for ethnic media, because ethnic media can fulfll their functions without ethnic languages (Johnson 2000), the situation is even more complex for social media. Migrants nowadays can easily get access to their homeland-based social media, but they are largely over- looked in academic research (Hang 2015). Moreover, many Chinese people create their accounts of host social media upon their arrival in the host country and con- tinue using homeland social media at the same time (Li and Chen 2014; Hang 2015; Chen 2017). This study is an attempt to fll this gap by examining the implications of using host country and home country social media among Chinese in New Zealand.

Social media use and acculturation

Newcomers to foreign cultures have implemented various technologies to resist and assist in the acculturation process (Croucher 2011). In recent years, social media is the most common and useful techniques used by the newcomers (Alamri 2018). 1 3 234 X. Du, S. Lin

The connection between acculturation and social media use can be traced back to the relationship between acculturation communication and traditional media (Li et al. 2013). The use of host country media was found to facilitate acculturation by providing channels to the dominant culture, while the use of home country media retarded acculturation by limiting the opportunity of intercultural communication that has a positive efect on acculturation (Kim 1988). These results were supported by many other studies (Chafee et al. 1990; Becker 1998). Since most of these stud- ies were conducted in 1990s when communication technology was underdeveloped, how social media afects acculturation is attracting more scholars (Wang and Mall- inckrodt 2006). Croucher (2011) proposed that social media usage afects not only migrants’ interactions with the dominant culture but also their communication with peo- ple from the same cultural background. Erdem’s (2018) research found that social media has a signifcant impact on the acculturation of immigrants in terms of acquiring language, cultural competencies and accumulating social capital. Mao and Qian (2015) reported that Facebook is an efective tool for Chinese professionals to maintain their social networks and adapt to Western culture in their host countries. Study on Chinese international students indicated that those who use SNSs more often report higher levels of social and academic adaptation in the host culture (For- bush and Foucault-Welles 2016; Cao and Zhang 2012). Chinese immigrants in Sin- gapore who communicate via the Internet more frequently with local people were found to be more adapted to the host country (Chen 2010). A test with Hispanics in the America revealed that Spanish social media usage reinforces their orientation towards Hispanic culture and negatively infuences their American culture orienta- tion; English social media usage prompts their identifcation with American culture, while has no signifcant efect on Spanish cultural identifcation; (Li and Tsai 2015). In general, the signifcance of host social media in facilitating acculturation and has been well researched, there is considerable uncertainty regarding to how host media afect home cultural orientation. Besides, the role of home country social media in maintaining host culture orientation and adopting new culture still needs more investigation.

Acculturation and psychological well‑being

Acculturation is one of the major areas of investigation in cross-cultural psychol- ogy (Zheng et al. 2004; Ward and Kennedy 1994; Berry 2005). Various studies have attempted to investigate the infuence of acculturation and psychological outcomes; however, studies remain conficted (Balidemaj 2016). Known as the approach of com- bining the ethnic culture with the mainstream culture, acculturation is described as a problematic and stressful process, in which low levels of acculturation are often associ- ated with higher levels of acculturative stress, loneliness and depression, whereas high levels of acculturation predict higher levels of positive psychological well-being (Berry et al. 1987; Berry 2005; Jang et al. 2005; Chun and Choi 2003). However, diferent results can be found in other studies. Williams and Berry (1991) argued that the pres- sure caused by acculturation is avoidable when migrants actively seek supports from 1 3 Social media usage, acculturation and psychological… 235 home country. A study conducted in Finland reached the conclusion that familial sup- ports and maintenance of home country values contributes to positive psychological well-being (Liebkind and Jasinskaja-Lahti 2000). Within Chinese groups, the conclu- sions are also not consistent. A research on Chinese international students in the US indicated that a higher level of acculturation is a signifcant predictor to psychological well-being, but the maintenance of their identifcation with China does not have sig- nifcant efects on their psychological well-being (Li et al. 2013). Zheng et al. (2004) investigated acculturation and subjective well-being of Chinese students in Australia. The results of this study revealed that both strong Australian identifcation and Chinese identifcation are predictors of enhanced subjective well-being, while there is no signif- icant correlation between negative emotions and Australian identifcation nor Chinese identifcation. In order to clarify the relationship between host/home country orienta- tion and positive/negative psychological well-being, we adopted the Depression–Hap- piness Scale (DHS) developed by Joseph and Lewis (1998) in this study.

Research questions and hypotheses

RQ1, H1 and H2 are proposed to explore how CN social media use frequency is cor- rected with the acculturation of Chinese in New Zealand. As a relatively new topic in acculturation research, homeland social media provides information and contacts with the country of origin. The results of a recent study with Chinese in New Zealand indi- cated that homeland social media use reinforces a sense of being ‘authentic Chinese’ among migrant netizens (Hang 2015). Thus, in this study, we expect that CN social media use is positively correlated with CNI and negatively correlated with NZI.

RQ1. What’s the relationship between CN social media use frequency and CNI/ NZI among Chinese in New Zealand?

H1 Chinese in New Zealand who use CN social media more frequently will score higher on CNI.

H2 Chinese in New Zealand who use CN social media more frequently will score lower on NZI.

We propose RQ2, H3 and H4 to test the relationships between NZ social media use and national identifcation. Previous literature has shown that host country social media use has a signifcant relationship with identifcation with the host country, yet the results are still conficted in terms of the relationship with identifcation with home country.

RQ2. What’s the relationship between NZ social media use frequency and CNI/ NZI among Chinese in New Zealand?

H3 Chinese in New Zealand who use NZ social media more frequently will score higher on NZI.

1 3 236 X. Du, S. Lin

H4 Chinese in New Zealand who use NZ social media more frequently will score lower on CNI.

Though social media in China and New Zealand involves diferent languages, platforms such as Renren and Facebook are technically similar (Qiu et al. 2013). Since diferent traits of users are believed to have certain preferences in using social media (Gou et al. 2014), we expect a signifcant correlation between the use of China’s social media and the use of New Zealand’s social media.

H5 The use of China’s social media and the use of New Zealand’s social media are positively correlated.

The infuence of acculturation and its psychological outcomes have been researched by many scholars, however, the results remain conficted. In order to clarify the relationship between host/home country identifcation and posi- tive/negative psychological well-being, we propose the following questions and hypotheses.

RQ3. What’s the relationship between CNI and Happiness/Depression among Chinese in New Zealand?

H6 Chinese in New Zealand who score higher on CNI will score lower on Happiness.

H7 Chinese in New Zealand who score higher on CNI will score higher on Depression.

RQ4. What’s the relationship between NZI and Happiness/Depression among Chinese in New Zealand?

H8 Chinese in New Zealand who score higher on NZI will score higher on Happiness.

H9 Chinese in New Zealand who score higher on NZI will score lower on Depression.

Social media is related to acculturation by strengthening strong ties with family and friends and creating weak ties that facilitate the process of migration as well as ofering a rich source of knowledge. They can serve to reduce emotional costs in the acculturation process. (Dekker and Engbersen 2013; McGregor and Siegel 2013a, b) The fndings of an online survey on East Asian students at American colleges indicated that the students who use Facebook reported a lower level of acculturative stress and the use of ethnic SNSs was positively associated with acculturative stress (Park et al. 2014). According to the literature review, the relationship between social

1 3 Social media usage, acculturation and psychological… 237 media and acculturation and the relationship between acculturation and psychologi- cal wellbeing has attracted much research attention, but very few studies have set on the relationship among the three variables. In order to investigate this relatively new topic, we propose two research questions on the mediating role of acculturation in the relationship between social media use and positive psychological well-being. RQ1. How does CN social media use mediate the relationship between CNI and Happiness. RQ2. How does NZ social media use mediate the relationship between NZI and Happiness.

Method

Materials

In addition to demographic information, the questionnaire also included measure- ments of the frequency of social media use, acculturation, psychological well-being.

The frequency of social media use

The eight social media popular in China (e.g. WeChat, Sina Weibo, QQ, Zhihu) were selected based on the report on social application released by CINIC (2017). The same number of social applications which are widely used in New Zealand (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Quora) were chosen with reference to sta- tistics from reliable survey company (Statcounter 2018). Subjects rated the fre- quency on 5-point scales ranging from never (1) to very often (7).

Acculturation Index

The AI (Ward and Rana-Deuba 1999) consists of two subscales (home and host national identifcation) with 21 items measuring values, cognitions, and behaviors. Subjects were asked to consider two questions about their current lifestyles on each item: (a) To what extent are your experiences and behaviors similar to those of typical New Zealanders? and (b) To what extent are your experiences and behaviors similar to those of typical members of China? Subjects rated the similarity on 7-point response scales ranging from not at all (1) to extremely (7) for identifcation with China (CNI) and identifcation with New Zealand (NZI). Although the original scales were in Eng- lish, their internal reliabilities (coefcient alpha) have been justifed by studies with dif- ferent ethnic groups including Chinese in the US (Wang and Mallinckrodt 2006; Ward and Rana-Deuba 1999; Ward and Kennedy 1994). In the present study, the Cronbach’s alphas for CNI and NZI were 0.952 and 0.943 respectively.

1 3 238 X. Du, S. Lin

Psychological well‑being

The DHS from Joseph and Lewis (1998) was used here to assess the depression and happiness level among Chinese in New Zealand. It contains 13 items on Depression and 12 items on Happiness. The response options ranged from never (1) to very often (5). The Cronbach’s alpha was 0.913 for Depression and 0.914 for Happiness.

Demographic information

The questions on demographic information were developed specifcally for use in this study. Subjects were asked to provide information on (a) gender, (b) age, (c) length of residency in New Zealand, (d) English profciency.

Respondents

The survey was administered by wjx.cn, a well-recognized online survey platform. We posted the recruiting information and links to the questionnaire on Facebook, Twitter, WeChat and migrants forums in New Zealand. The respondents were born in China and claimed themselves to be Chinese. They were also asked to forward the links to others who meet the requirements. Each respondent was compensated by a small amount of money. Seventy-four of the 121 respondents were female, 46 were male and 1 chose not to answer. The mean age of all respondents was 35.24 years old. The mean length of residency in New Zealand for all respondents was 7.56 years.

Results

We conducted linear regression analyses to determine if social media use was pre- dictive of national identifcation for the sample (See Table 1). Specifcally, the relationship between CN social media use and CNI (β = − 0.123, p > 0.05) or NZI (β = 0.098, p > 0.05) was not statistically signifcant, hence H1 and H2 were not supported. However, higher NZ social media use frequency was associated with higher score on NZI (β = 0.201, p < 0.05) and lower score on CNI (β = − 0.194, p < 0.05), thus both H3 and H4 were supported. We also conducted Pearson analyses in order to test the relationship between the use of each social media in the sur- vey and national identifcation. The results indicated that use frequencies of Twit- ter (r = 0.253, p < 0.01) and Instagram (r = 0.258, p < 0.01) were positively related to NZI; the use frequencies of What’s App (r = − 0.188, p < 0.05), Tumblr (r = − 0.295, p < 0.01) and Quora (r = − 0.201, p < 0.05) were negatively related to CNI. An inter- esting fnding was that the use frequency of Weibo (r = 0.228, p < 0.05), a Chinese application, was positively associated with NZI. Next, we performed Pearson analyses to examine the correlation between CN social media use and NZ social media use, The results (see Table 2) suggested that the use frequency of CN social media (M = 21.18, SD = 7.11) and the use frequency of NZ social media (M = 17.595, SD = 6.542) were positively related to each other

1 3 Social media usage, acculturation and psychological… 239

Table 1 Results of regression analyses (social media use frequency and acculturation) β t R R2 Adj. ­R2 p

CNI CN social media − 0.123 − 1.347 0.123 0.051 0.007 0.181 NZ social media − 0.194 − 2.156 0.194 0.038 0.030 0.033* NZI CN social media 0.098 1.078 0.098 0.010 0.001 0.283 NZ social media 0.201 2.242 0.201 0.041 0.032 0.027*

*p < 0.05 (2-tailed)

Table 2 Results of correlation CN social media NZ social media analyses (CN social media use and NZ social media use) CN social media 1 NZ social media 0.594** 1

**p < 0.01 (2-tailed)

(r = 0.594, p < 0.01), which was in line with H5. Pearson analysis was also used to test the relationship between CNI and NZI, but no signifcant result was generated (r = 0.029, p > 0.05). Linear regression analyses were also conducted to assess the relationship between acculturation and psychological well-being (see Table 3). We were surprised to fnd that higher score on CNI was associated with higher score on Happiness (β = 0.196, p < 0.05), contrary to H6 that Chinese in New Zealand who score higher on CNI will score lower on Happiness. H7 was not supported because there was no signif- cant relationship between CNI and Depression (β = − 0.110, p > 0.05). For NZI, a signifcant positive relationship with Happiness was observed (β = 0.236, p < 0.01), nonetheless, no signifcant result on Depression was found (β =0.071, p > 0.05), thus H8 was supported but H9 was not. In order to answer RQ3 and RQ4, we used Model 4 in bootstrap approach (Zhao et al. 2010; Preacher et al. 2007; Hayes 2013; Chen et al. 2013; Preacher and Hayes 2004) with 5000 resamples and a confdence interval of 95% to test the mediating role of national identifcation in the relationship between social media use and Hap- piness. The indirect efect of “CN social media use → CNI → Happiness” was not signifcant (− 0.0899, 0.0032), because 0 was included in this interval, while for RQ4, the indirect efect of “NZ social media use → NZI → Happiness” was found to be signifcant (0.0102, 0.1392), efect = 0.0543 (see Table 4). We further examined the direct efect of NZ social media use on Happiness. The results showed that when the mediator variable was controlled, the direct efect of NZ social media use on Happiness was not signifcant (− 0.3052, 0.0691) (see Table 4), in other words, the relationship between NZ social media use and happiness was completely and posi- tively mediated by NZI. Moreover, a variety of tests were conducted to test whether demographic variables were signifcantly associated with social media use, acculturation and psychological

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Table 3 Results of regression β t R R2 Adj. ­R2 p analyses (acculturation and psychological well-being) Happiness CNI 0.196 2.181 0.196 0.038 0.030 0.031* NZI 0.236 2.651 0.236 0.056 0.048 0.009** Depression CNI − 0.110 − 1.205 0.110 0.012 0.004 0.230 NZI 0.071 0.777 0.071 0.005 − 0.003 0.439

*p < 0.05 (2-tailed), **p < 0.01 (2-tailed)

Table 4 Results of bootstrap analyses on the mediating role of acculturation Efect SE BootLLCI BootULCI

Indirect efect CN social media use → CNI → Happiness − 0.0224 0.0222 − 0.0899 0.0032 NZ social media use → NZI → Happiness 0.0543 0.0311 0.0102 0.1392 CN social media use → Happiness − 0.0358 0.0870 − 0.2081 0.1365 Direct efect NZ social media use → Happiness − 0.1181 0.0945 − 0.3052 0.0691 well-being. First, the results of T test showed that male Chinese in New Zealand used NZ social media more frequently than female Chinese in New Zealand did, and had a mean of 19.130 (SD = 7.335), the latter had a mean of 16.473 (SD = 5.684), (t = 2.097, df = 78.151, p < 0.5). Second, one-way ANOVA tests were conducted to determine whether respondents in diferent age groups scored diferently on Depres- sion. The results showed signifcant diference on Depression (f = 2.341, p < 0.05). The youngest group had the lowest average score of 15, while the oldest group had the highest average score of 32. Third, the results of one-way ANOVA tests on Eng- lish profciency revealed that there were signifcant diferences on NZI across the four groups (f = 3.266, p < 0.05). Chinese migrants in the poor group scored low- est on NZI, and had a mean of 13.727 (SD = 4.002). Lastly, one-way ANOVA on the length of residency in New Zealand indicated no signifcant diference on social media use, acculturation and psychological well-being (Fig. 1).

Indirect effect ：-.0224；Direct effect：.870

-.12 CN social media use CI -.11 Depression 3 .098 -.194* .196* .071 .594**

NZ social media use NZI Happiness .201* .236**

Indirect effect：.0543*；Direct effect：-.1181

Fig. 1 Summary of hypotheses testing

1 3 Social media usage, acculturation and psychological… 241

Discussion and future research

The use of NZ social media was positively associated with NZI and negatively asso- ciated with CNI. These results were consistent with those of prior research. How- ever, it is notable that the relationship between CN social media use and NZI or CNI was not statistically signifcant. One possible explanation is that CN social media use has a mixed efect on acculturation which may not be indicated by a one-shot survey. On the one hand, homeland social media use allows Chinese migrants to maintain contacts with home country and also the local Chinese group, thus will more than likely lead to decreased steps toward acculturation. On the other hand, homeland media, especially comprehensive social application such as WeChat, may integrated with ethnic media by providing information and knowledge specially for Chinese in New Zealand. What’s more, according to the results of analyses, the use of Twitter and Instagram was positively related to NZI, both of them feature interac- tion with others and presentation of oneself. A possible reason for the interesting fnding that the use frequency of Weibo was positively associated with NZI is that those who has stayed in New Zealand for a long time tend to use this application to keep up with what’s happening in China. In line with H3, the use frequencies of CN social media and NZ social media were found to be positively correlated to each other. Specifcally, Chinese in New Zealand used CN social media more frequently than NZ social media. Relatively high uncertainty avoidance in Chinese culture could be one of factors responsible for this result, as prior studies have revealed that a culture’s uncertainty avoidance on signifcantly and negatively afected social intentions to use media (Gong et al. 2014; Stankosky et al. 2010). Besides, the result of Pearson analysis indicated that there was no signifcant relationship between CNI and NZI, supported the view that migrants do not necessarily lose identifcation with culture of their country of origin even if they establish identifcation with the dominant culture (Li and Tsai 2015). Interestingly, the present study indicated that both CNI and NZI were signif- cantly related to positive psychological well-being, but neither had a signifcant relationship with Depression, which were consistent with Zheng et al. (2004) study with Chinese students in Australia. This indirectly proved that modern migrants are experiencing acculturation diferent from pioneer migrants who had no choice but to interact with local society. The growing Chinese community enables Chinese migrants to have a more comfortable acculturation process. When problems occur in their acculturation in the host country, they may turn to the local Chinese commu- nity for help. For people who have low motives for acculturation, they can easily live in a host country while maintain old customs, values and interact with people from the same cultural background. A key contribution of this study is that NZ social media use positively related to positive psychological well-being through the mediation of NZI. This fnding may provide implications for counselors and social workers who work with migrants. They may help migrants sufering from acculturative stress and depression by encouraging them to use host social media.

1 3 242 X. Du, S. Lin

Additional statistical analyses were performed to examine the relationship between demographics and social media use, acculturation and psychological well- being of Chinese in New Zealand. First, T-tests were employed to test whether gen- der has a signifcant diference on host and home land social media use. The results revealed no signifcant gender deference on CN social media use, but male Chinese used NZ social media more frequently than female Chinese did. This supported pre- vious fndings that men use social media to make new contacts more frequently than women do (Muscanell and Guadagno 2012; Mazman and Usluel 2011). Second, age was also found to be positively related to Depression. People in the oldest group had the highest level of depression. Third, ANOVA analysis of English profciency and NZI has shown a signifcant diference across the four groups. Those in the poor group scored lowest on NZI. Lastly, length of residency in New Zealand had no sig- nifcant diference on social media use, acculturation and psychological well-being. There are a few limitations to the present study. First, the samples in this study may not be able to properly represent the Chinese population in New Zealand. Study with a bigger sample size would produce more generalizable results. Second, our research was unsuccessful in explaining the role of homeland social media usage in acculturation and psychological well-being of Chinese in New Zealand. Third, the personality of migrants could be taken into consideration by future research. Given the complexity and increasing importance of these social media, scholars may adopt qualitative research methods to take an insight into the relationships between them.

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