Title: Social media use can be positive for mental health and well-being | News | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Headings: Social media use can be positive for mental health and well-being
Social media use can be positive for mental health and well-being
What is healthy vs. potentially problematic social media use?

Content: What disparities did you find in the ways that social media use benefits and harms certain populations? What concerns does this raise? My co-authors Rachel McCloud, Vish Viswanath, and I found that the benefits and harms associated with social media use varied across demographic, socioeconomic, and racial population sub-groups. Specifically, while the benefits were generally associated with younger age, better education, and being white, the harms were associated with older age, less education, and being a racial minority. Indeed, these findings are consistent with the body of work on communication inequalities and health disparities that our lab, the Viswanath lab, has documented over the past 15 or so years. We know that education, income, race, and ethnicity influence people’s access to, and ability to act on, health information from media, including the Internet. The concern is that social media may perpetuate those differences. — Amy Roeder