smsociety15

Author: Shaohai Jiang

Recent years has witnessed an increasing tendency of social media use for health-related activities. However, research on such usage is still poor. So far, there has been little discussion about what types of factors might influence social media use for health. This study described users and nonusers of social media for health activities in terms of their sociodemographic, technological and health-related variables and tested whether these factors could also serve as predictors of using social media for health activities. The study consisted of a telephone survey of 949 adults who reported experience of using the Internet for health information. Results showed that users and nonusers differed significantly in their education level, race, digital literacy level, Internet use frequency and perceived benefit of seeking online health information. In terms of causal relationships, age, gender, race, digital literacy and perceived benefit were significant predictors of social media use for health activities. Education, income, and Internet use frequency could predict one type of social media use respectively. Health status and perceived risk had no significant relationship with any type of social media use for health. The limitation and implication of this study was also discussed.