Drawing on the traditional Reading Motivation Scale and new findings about digital reading motivation, the study explores the motivation dimensions of adolescents’ social reading from the case study of the middle school students’ reading via We Chat in Shanghai. Based on the questionnaire survey, this study found the following: 1) the social reading motivation is a multidimensional construct of six dimensions and three categories, which are Intrinsic Motivation, Socializing Motivation and Goals for Achievement;2) of the three categories, Socializing Motivation accounts the most variance, and the Social Interaction dimension, as an independent dimension in this study, refers to students’ socialization both in the offline world and the virtual community;3) different groups of students have distinctively different motivational profiles;grade and living area significantly influence students’ social reading motivations.
