1901: The Cost of Me-Time: Social Media as a Window Into the Gendered Career Outcomes (13009)

While there has been escalating interest in the impact of social media on employee outcomes, research on the role of supervisors in this context is limited. To address this gap, we conducted two studies exploring how employees' social media posts affect their promotability ratings through supervisors' perceptions of their work-life conflict. Utilizing a survey experiment with Facebook post mockups of a fictitious employee, we examined how respondents, assuming the role of supervisors, evaluated the employee’s work-life conflict and promotability. These evaluations were based on the employee’s presentation of hobbies, parental status, and gender on Facebook. In the first study, findings from 306 respondents indicated that posts depicting hobbies as resource-depleting, as opposed to energizing, negatively impacted promotability ratings. This effect was, unexpectedly, particularly strong for female employees without children. The second study, with 241 respondents, further examined this unexpected finding, underscoring that perceived work-life conflict is a mediating mechanism explaining why resource depleting hobby posts led to the lowest promotability ratings for females without children. Alternative potential mediators were also explored but were not found to be significant.

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