Department of Public Health, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, USA.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2023 Jan 20;20(3):1910. doi: 10.3390/ijerph20031910.
Some research suggests that parents on social media have access to greater social support and health information. However, evidence also connects parental social media use to negative outcomes including increased parental stress, depression, and distraction. Using the uses and gratification theory, this study goes beyond measures of parents' individual mental health and explores social media use and its association with family well-being. Family health outcomes were predicted to vary with parents' use and gratifications of social media, with parents who use social media primarily for information and connection scoring higher on family health and parents who used social media for entertainment scoring worse on family health. The sample included 482 heterosexual married or cohabiting partners recruited through a Qualtrics panel. All participants were parents of children ages of 3-13, with mothers and fathers each completing the survey. Findings indicated that fathers' use of social media for entertainment and connecting with family and friends was associated with better family well-being and health resources ( < 0.01). However, mothers' use of social media did not have a statistically meaningful relationship with family health variables. There was no evidence that parental social media use was associated with negative family health outcomes. Longitudinal data is needed to determine the temporal relationship between social media use and family health. Public health professionals interested in improving family health may consider how to better reach fathers on social media to increase health resources.
一些研究表明，社交媒体上的父母可以获得更多的社会支持和健康信息。然而，证据也表明，父母使用社交媒体会导致负面后果，包括增加父母的压力、抑郁和分心。本研究利用使用与满足理论，超越了父母个体心理健康的衡量标准，探索了社交媒体的使用及其与家庭幸福的关系。家庭健康结果预计会因父母对社交媒体的使用和满足感而有所不同，主要将社交媒体用于获取信息和建立联系的父母在家庭健康方面得分更高，而将社交媒体用于娱乐的父母在家庭健康方面得分更低。该样本包括通过 Qualtrics 小组招募的 482 名异性已婚或同居伴侣，所有参与者都是 3-13 岁儿童的父母，母亲和父亲分别完成了调查。研究结果表明，父亲使用社交媒体进行娱乐和与家人及朋友联系与更好的家庭幸福感和健康资源有关（<0.01）。然而，母亲使用社交媒体与家庭健康变量之间没有统计学上的显著关系。没有证据表明父母使用社交媒体与负面家庭健康结果有关。需要纵向数据来确定社交媒体使用与家庭健康之间的时间关系。关注改善家庭健康的公共卫生专业人员可能会考虑如何在社交媒体上更好地接触父亲，以增加健康资源。
