Social Media and Health: Emerging Trends and Future Directions for Research on Young Adults

• Main Authors: Peng Wu, Ran Feng
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-07-01
• Series: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
• Subjects: health-related social media; emotional support; information support; service quality
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/15/8141
• ISSN: 1661-7827; 1660-4601

The ubiquity and affordances of social media have allowed young people to become both active posters and passive recipients of communication related to health. For instance, people may post exercise goals and behaviors on social media, while at the same time, they may be exposed to friends drinking alcohol and/or indulging in unhealthy snacking. This intersection of sociotechnical systems (i.e., social media), and health and wellbeing, has garnered increasing scholarly attention. How to understand and manage the continuous use intention of health-related social media, and then provide a better service platform and create a good service model for the needs of young adults has become an important topic in the research of social media and health-related fields. Based on the SOR theory, this paper constructs a theoretical model of factors affecting the continuous use intention of health-related social media. This paper uses questionnaires and structural equation empirical research methods, relevant software to process and analyze the data, and tests the applicability of the model. The results reveal that emotional support, information support, and service quality can significantly affect pan-family consciousness, pan-family consciousness can significantly affect the continuous use intention of health-related social media. In addition, our results also show that pan-family consciousness plays a mediating role between information support and the continuous use intention of health-related social media, pan-family consciousness plays a mediating role between the service quality and the continuous use intention of health-related social media, and self-efficacy plays a mediating role between pan-family consciousness and the continuous use intention of health-related social media. These findings have important implications for research and practice in the fields of the continuous use intention of health-related social media. We hope to help with the emerging trends and future directions for research on social media and health.