Citation

Cole DA, Nick EA, Varga G, Smith D, Zelkowitz RL, Ford MA, Lédeczi Á. Cyberpsychol. Behav. Soc. Netw. 2019; 22(11): 692-699.

Affiliation

Department of Computer Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Mary Ann Liebert Publishers)

DOI

10.1089/cyber.2019.0035

PMID

31697601

Abstract

In a two-wave, 4-month longitudinal study of 308 adults, two hypotheses were tested regarding the relation of Twitter-based measures of online social media use and in-person social support with depressive thoughts and symptoms. For four of five measures, Twitter use by in-person social support interactions predicted residualized change in depression-related outcomes over time; these results supported a corollary of the social compensation hypothesis that social media use is associated with greater benefits for people with lower in-person social support. In particular, having a larger Twitter social network (i.e., following and being followed by more people) and being more active in that network (i.e., sending and receiving more tweets) are especially helpful to people who have lower levels of in-person social support. For the fifth measure (the sentiment of Tweets), no interaction emerged; however, a beneficial main effect offset the adverse main effect of low in-person social support.

Language: en

Keywords

Twitter; depression; rich-get-richer; social compensation; social media; social support