essay about communication through social media

Chapter 6: 21st-century media and issues

6.10.2 Social media and communication (research essay)

Lindsey Matier

English 102, April 2021

Communication is extremely important in today’s world, whether it be verbal or nonverbal. It can take place through many different forms such as through writing, speaking, listening and physical actions. These forms of communication evolve and continue to improve over time. As humans, we rely on communication for almost everything and it is a way of life. Communication has evolved from talking to writing letters to texting or talking over the phone. Every time a new form of communication is brought up and becomes more popular, we have to adapt and evolve to that new lifestyle. Throughout all the new forms of communication and ways of evolving, social media has been one of the most influential so far. Social media has allowed us to create new ways of communicating, such as texting or posting through different apps. It can connect us with people all over the world and give us a platform to express ourselves in ways that have not been possible before. While social media started off as a small form of technology, it has morphed into aspects of our everyday life. Now there are apps for everything from social media profiles to online shopping. While social media and technology itself has evolved, this has also affected our communication with each other and the world. Social media has created a fast track for information in a matter of seconds. It can give people a platform with millions of followers overnight for doing practically anything. It can help people express themselves in new ways and connect with people who have similar interests. The end goal of social media is to make people happy and ultimately make lives easier.

Introduction

With all this being said, it is evident that social media is in our everyday lives and will continue to change. It has a very strong grip on society as social media usage continues to rise throughout the years. Generalizing social media, we are exposed to forms of media at almost all times of the day. Answering the question of what media is will help give a better understanding of social media as a whole. Media can be defined as a way of mass communication. This could include siting in the car listening to ads on the radio all the way to scrolling on twitter. We are exposed to social media less often than generalized media, but it tends to come in greater quantities when exposed. For example, for people that wake up and check twitter it is an instant flood of information with every scroll. Everything from politics to sports to celebrity news is available at the fingertips. The concern is not all focused on the overwhelming information, but also the overwhelming number of comments and opinions. If we wanted to debate or talk about something before social media it had to be done in person, face to face. Now with social media, we are able to fight with people in comment sections on a backup account with a different name and no connection to who we really are. This new form of communication takes away the vulnerability of speaking to people and having genuine conversation, and makes up for it in internet trolls. Overall, social media is impacting the way we communicate with each other and the real questions are: Is social media impacting us in a positive or negative way? Do the positive aspects outweigh the negative aspects? Is social media hindering the way we communicate in person with each other? Is their more room for improvement when it comes to dealing with communication in the social media spectrum? How is social media impacting younger generation’s communication versus older generation’s communication? How can we help improve our communication skills on social media and in real life?

Personal Research 

Along with the other studies that I found from the sources I chose, I also conducted my own study to determine more accurate and recent data. I asked students mostly within high school and college range questions relating to social media and communication. I tried to get a wide range of data dealing with social media apps, screen time, and overall communication as a result of social media. I expected to see almost all negative responses about social media and communication. I figured that most people would respond saying that it has affected them negatively rather than positively, but the results were different compared to what I expected.

The first questions I asked had to do with social media itself. I asked questions about their most used social media apps, screen time, what age they were allowed to start using social media, and whether or not they think social media has had a negative or positive impact on them. As expected, most of the social media apps were some of the most popular ones like Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok. Overall, the average screen time for all apps was evenly split between 4-6 and 6-8 hours, which I also expected. Something that did surprise me was the amount of time spent on certain social media apps. The data was split pretty evenly three ways and all between 1-4 hours. The next two questions dealt with when they group surveyed started using social media. I asked these questions because a lot of the points I want to discuss later in my paper have to deal with age and whether younger generations are suffering when it comes to communication. More than half the people surveyed said that they wished that they had waited to get social media until they were older. Some said that it is not appropriate for younger kids and that it is just toxic in general. Something that I really like that a couple people mentioned was that in reality, social media at a young age is stupid and useless. A lot of people said they wish they would have enjoyed their childhood more and they would be more extroverted now if they had not been exposed that early. The last question of this section that I asked was if they thought social media has had a more positive or negative impact on them. Overall, the data was split but leaning slightly towards the more positive side. The positive answers mostly dealt with being able to talk to stay in contact with people and meeting new friends. The negative answers all related to mental health and feeling bad about themselves. A lot of people said it is toxic and very controlling and takes up too much of our time.

The next set of questions I asked had to do more with communication and interaction with and without social media. I asked questions like how they feel about social media and how it has impacted their communication, their mental health, and if it has made our lives easier. I decided to ask questions like these because I figured I would get a wide range of responses and a lot of people’s different opinions. I started off by asking if people are an introvert or an extrovert to get an idea of what the responses would be like, and 66% said somewhere in between the two. The response for the next question really shocked me because I received such a one-side response. I asked if they think social media has impacted their communication and the way they interact with others and 75% (18/24 people) said yes. This is the information that I was looking for along with the next two questions. The next question asked if they think social media has negatively impacted their mental health and 50% said yes. I also plan on using this as a research question to show that social media can affect our mental health and therefore affect the way we interact with and around other people. The last two questions are similar but the responses were both very good. Almost everyone answered yes to the question asking if social media has made our lives easier. Everyone that answered yes said they think so because it helps them talk to friends, stay in touch with people they do not see as much, and meet new people that they are comfortable talking to. The people that said no also made good points such as it takes over our lives and it is filled with too much hate and cancel culture. I agree with both sides and am very happy that people can feel a positive response especially when it comes to communicating with other people online. The last question I asked was used to wrap up the whole survey and topic. I asked if they think social media has made our generation’s communication improve or worsen. The data was pretty evenly split, and most people gave a positive and a negative. The people that said improve gave that answer because they said it broadens our communication and allows us to talk to people at a wider range. The people who said it has made it worse all said that it is ruining our face-to-face interaction and causing us to lose emotion. They said that some people do not even know how to have a proper in person conversation and that they are too dependent on their phones. Overall, I agree with both arguments that people made but I do think that the positives outweigh the negatives in most of these situations and questions.

Research Questions

The first question I want to ask has to deal with the overall social media and communication connection and has multiple other questions I would like to cover within it. The main question is: Is social media hindering the way we communicate with each other? I also want to touch on questions like: Is social media impacting us in a positive or negative way? Do the positives outweigh the negatives? The second set of research questions I have is: Is their more room for improvement when it comes to dealing with communication in the social media spectrum? How can we help improve our communication skills on social media and in real life? How is social media impacting younger generation’s communication versus older generation’s communication?

Research Question One

Social media and communication have a direct connection to each other and both have a strong impact on the outcome of the other. My first research question has to do with that. My questions center around how social media has impacted our communication, and whether or not it is positive or negative. First, I think it is important to note the changes and different characteristics that come into play when talking about this. Things like age and problems going on in our world can affect our social media usage and communication. While we connect to people on a deeper level when talking to the in person, social media has also given us a newer and more broad way of communicating. The article “How Social Media Affects Our Ability to Communicate” by Stacey Hanke, talks about different ways social media has impacted our communication. Social media has become so relevant in our day to day lives and Hanke describes it in a couple different ways. She describes it as information binging and the fear of missing out, social graces and conversational boredom. Within these, she explains how social media has become an excuse and escape to talk to people face to face. Hanke also talks about how even though it is limiting our in person communication, it can sometimes make communicating in general easier, by being able to talk to each other in just a few words (Hanke 1). In another article by Ryan J. Fuller titled “The Impact of Social Media Use on Our Social Skills”, he discusses similar topics to Hanke’s article but also brings up more positive attributes of social media. Fuller starts of his article by giving some statistics, stating that 75% of teens own cellphones and 25% of them using it for social media, and also says that they use 7.5 hours a day using it (Fuller 1). I am glad that this was brought up because it is important to know how much time is spent on social media, scrolling through feed. Next, Fuller starts to discuss some of the benefits of social media. He briefly explains how social media is beneficial because we are able to stay in touch with our friends and family, and share important parts of our lives with them. He also explains how it helps people reach out to new friends and provide themselves with more opportunities (Fuller 1). Overall, I really like that he mentioned these because it is important to keep in mind the vast majority of social media and communication. While some use it for more simpler purposes likes just keeping up to date with what is going on in the world, others use it to make new friends, find new job opportunities, and stay in touch with people. Another topic I find important when it comes to answering this research question is how Covid affected everything. With the pandemic, we were left inside with nothing to do but what was at our fingertips. This pandemic increased social media usage drastically. The article “Social Media Insights Into US Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Longitudinal Analysis of Twitter Data” by Danny Valdez et al, shows extensive research into determining just how much social media usage in the United States increased during the pandemic. They did experiments and surveys to determine multiple responses to research questions and show how much we rely on social media to communicate with each other. During the pandemic, everyone spent more time on their social media and their phone in general, probably more than they would like to admit. The article helps give more insight into this claim. There is the idea that social media was meant as an addition to our lives. For some people, it has become an addiction and a new piece of their life. The article focuses on how social media could be a toxic place and have a negative effect on our mental health. The time period for this information focuses around the COVID-19 pandemic. Using data from Twitter, Valdez created a study to determine the mood of people during the pandemic and the usage throughout (Valdez et al 2). Collecting tweets with certain hashtags and during time periods, the goal was to determine how much the pandemic affected people’s moods, and how much they put out and shared on social media. They used hashtags, timeline data, and tweets from different periods such as the first lockdown, different stay at home orders, etc. Given the responses to the data, they were able to determine the increase in social media usage. We cannot determine if this had a positive or negative effect on the people who were using Twitter, but we can infer that social media is becoming a key part of our lives. Not being able to talk to people as much in person during the first few months of the pandemic greatly affected communication, in positive and negative ways. Communication over the phone increased due to the amount of free time that people had and were able to spend talking to others. Contrary to that, in person communication also decreased given that people were not really allowed to leave the house. The next article by Tayebi et al, “The Role of Information Systems in Communication Through Social Media” focuses a lot about how we have evolved over time with social media and communication. They start off by talking about how social networks are like social media societies. They explain it by resembling it to a human society, as it is filled with people communicating, regardless of time or place. They also exemplify other aspects such as emotional support, information, emotions (Tayebi 2). Social media is constantly looked at through such a negative light due to some of the major bad events that have taken place. While it can be difficult at times to look past the negatives, it is important to recognize and acknowledge the positives. The growth of scientific research would not be possible without the amount of information received from the media (Tayebi 3). Without social media and media in general, we would not be where we are today as a society. As mentioned earlier, it is so easy to get lost in the negative aspects of social media and discard the positive ones. Positive parts of social media such as widespread communication and unlimited access to information makes it all worth it. Staying on topic with positive aspects of social media and communication, social media in the workplace has also broken down barriers for communication. The article “A Guide to the Successful Use of Social Media in the Workplace” by Clark Boyd gives insight into how social media has improved the workplace, and ultimately communication and interaction as a whole. Companies can use social media as a form of branding and way to communicate their products (Boyd 4). Boyd states, “Harvard Business Review finds that 82% of employees believe social media improves work relationships. Left to their own devices, your teams will connect and communicate on social networks, both inside and outside the office.” This directly relates to the research question asking whether social media hinders our communication with each other. Social media also helps when it comes to dealing with complaints placed online. By seeing these through social media, it can help the company communicate either with the person or their company the concerns that are being stated (Boyd 9). Overall, it is safe to say that social media has directly affected communication throughout different aspects of our lives.

Research Question Two

My second set of research questions has a lot to do with the future and how we can improve. Questions such as: Is their more room for improvement when it comes to dealing with communication in the social media spectrum? How can we help improve our communication skills on social media and in real life? How is social media impacting younger generation’s communication versus older generation’s communication? The article “What is Literacy” by James Paul Gee talks a lot about the basics of communication. I find this an important article to talk about before I go into more detail with this second research question. Gee explains discourse as a socially accepted way of speaking, thinking, and acting (Gee 1). It is important to note this because social media has changed that discourse for us. We no longer communicate and interact the same way in which we use to therefore almost giving us a new discourse. Another thing Gee discusses is identity kits. Gee explains identity kits as “appropriate costumes and instructions on how to act and talk” (Gee 2). This relates to social media because there is a certain way we communicate online that we wouldn’t do in person. For example, we use emojis and abbreviations to communicate on social media or over text, but this is something we would not do when communicating face-to-face. There are also some basic well-known rules of social media that follow along the lines of an identity kit. Such as, for Instagram it is a common idea not to like people’s pictures from too long ago. When you say this aloud it sounds like it is not a big deal and silly almost, but for people that use social media it is something that makes sense. The next article is going to focus more on the question that has to do with room for improvement of communication. The article “The Positive Effect of Not Following Others on Social Media” by Francesca Valsesia, Davide Proserpio, and Joseph C. Nunes involves how we deal with social media and how we react to it. The article has a lot to do with pyramid schemes and marketing schemes on social media, simply due to follower count. Social media has a lot of power over us and the content we see. Influencers have too much impact on what we see every day and this overall effects our communication (Valsesia 1). Social media feeds us information at our fingertips, whether it be true or false. Valsesia is trying to get the point across that social media has no impact on our lives without the phone and therefore, having a smaller follower count is better for our communication and overall wellbeing in the first place. Leading into my next article, social media can have a huge impact on the younger generation. This leads into part of my second research question dealing with the younger generation and their communication. The article “The Impact of Social Media on Youth Mental Health: Challenges and Opportunities” by Jacqueline Nesi shows how social media is a very complex brand of information and makes it complicated for everyone. Younger kids having access to it and multiple devices like computers and phones makes it that much more difficult. There are a lot of positives and negatives for younger kids having access to social media and the internet in general. It has an impact on their mental health and studies show it leads to signs of depression, body dysmorphia, eating disorders (Nesi 2). It can also affect their communication and outward identity due to things such as bullying, internet drama, and behavioral problems. While it does have serious negative risks, social media also can bring a lot of new positive ones. Things like creative ideas, humor and entertainment, and being able to explore their identity are all really great positives that social media gives us (Nesi 4). Most of them using it as a way to connect with friends and family and help them feel a sense of acceptance and belonging (Nesi 4). Similarly to this, social media has given a great outlet for kids and young adults to speak out on issues going on in the world. The article “Building Bridges: Exploring the Communication Trends and Perceived Sociopolitical Benefits of Adolescents Engaging in Online Social Justice Efforts” by Mariah Elsa Kornbluh goes into detail about the racial injustices in the world and how they are communicated through social media. Social media networks can help connect kids to different backgrounds and aspects of their lives (Kornbluh 1). Kornbluh expresses how a society only can flourish under civic engagement and being able to express ourselves, and social media is helping us do that. It is helping the younger generation prepare for the civic role that they will undergo (Kornbluh 2). Social media helps play a major role in participating in political movements and bringing awareness to topics (Kornbluh 3). This all is done by the younger generation and would not be possible without them. So, while it is easy to look at the negative parts of social media and how it effects the younger generation, it also brings great awareness to real life problems in our world. This last article I wanted to go over dealing with this research question has to do with the pandemic. The article “Responses to COVID-19 in Higher Education: Social Media Usage for Sustaining Formal Academic Communication in Developing Countries” by Abu Elnasr E. Sobaih, Ahmed M. Hasanein and Ahmed E. Abu Elnasr briefly talks about communication with social media in higher education systems. Education systems had to switch from in person learning and communication to online learning, which was a struggle for everyone. Throughout the time that this took place, results showed that social media had a positive effect on students dealing with this (Sobaih 1). Students used social media to build a community and help support each other through this rough time. Through these results, proper usage of social media can be shown as a positive result for a new era of learning (Sobaih 1). This is just one more reason why social media can help us improve our future.

After answering my research questions, it has become clear to me that while social media does have negative aspects, the positive aspects outweigh them. Between the articles and my own research, I have enough evidence to prove that social media does effect communication, but in a more positive way. The way we act and present ourselves is heavily influenced by social media and communication between generations are different and can be seen that way. It is important to note the accomplishments we have made as a society with social media and the media in general. It has helped connect families, provide support groups, and provide entertainment in desperate times. Our communication has changed because of social media but has changed and helped us for the better in the long run. Keeping social media a positive place and staying away from the toxic people on it will only help us grow and learn new things about ourselves.

Works Cited

Boyd, Clark. “A Guide to Using Social Media in the Workplace in 2021.”  The Blueprint , The Blueprint, 13 May 2020, www.fool.com/the-blueprint/social-media-in-the-workplace/.

https://www.fool.com/the-blueprint/social-media-in-the-workplace/

D, Valdez, et al. “Social Media Insights Into US Mental Health During the Covid-19 Pandemic: Longitudinal Analysis of Twitter Data.”  Journal of Medical Internet Research  , vol. 22, no. 12, 14 Dec. 2020, pp. 1438–8871.

http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.ulib.csuohio.edu:2050/eds/detail/detail? vid=8&sid=ff59b04c-b868-44cd-b864-4538e112a2ea%40sessionmgr103&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#AN=33284783&db=mnh

J, Nesi. “The Impact of Social Media on Youth Health: Challenges and Opportunities.”  North Carolina Medical Journal , vol. 81, no. 2, 2020, pp. 116–121.

http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.ulib.csuohio.edu:2050/eds/detail/detail?vid=10&sid=ff59b04c-b868-44cd-b864-4538e112a2ea%40sessionmgr103&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#AN=32132255&db=mnh

Gee, James Paul. “What is literacy.”  Negotiating academic literacies: Teaching and learning  across languages and cultures  (1998): 51-59.

https://academic.jamespaulgee.com/pdfs/Gee%20What%20is%20Literacy.pdf

Hanke, Stacey. “How Social Media Affects Our Ability to Communicate.”  Thrive Global , 13  Sept. 2018, thriveglobal.com/stories/how-social-media-affects-our-ability-to-communicate/.

https://thriveglobal.com/stories/how-social-media-affects-our-ability-to-communicate/

http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.proxy.ulib.csuohio.edu:2050/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&sid=467b825c-34f8-4e47-95df-e5b2b61bbaf4%40sessionmgr4006

Kornbluh, Mariah Elsa. “Building Bridges.”  Youth & Society , vol. 51, no. 8, 2017, pp. 1104–1126., doi:10.1177/0044118×17723656.

https://journals-sagepub-com.proxy.ulib.csuohio.edu/doi/pdf/10.1177/0044118X17723656

Retchin, Sarah, et al. “The Impact of Social Media Use on Social Skills.”  New York Behavioral Health , 1 Dec. 2020, newyorkbehavioralhealth.com/the-impact-of-social-media-use-on-social-skills/.

https://newyorkbehavioralhealth.com/the-impact-of-social-media-use-on-social-skills/

Sobaih, Abu Elnasr E., et al. “Responses to COVID-19 in Higher Education: Social Media Usage for Sustaining Formal Academic Communication in Developing Countries.”  MDPI , Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 12 Aug. 2020, www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/16/6520/htm.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/16/6520/htm

Tayeb, Seyed Mohammad, et al. “The Role of Information Systems in Communication through Social Media.”  International Journal of Data and Network Science , vol. 3, no. 3, 2019, pp. 245–268., doi:10.5267/j.ijdns.2019.2.002.

http://www.growingscience.com/ijds/Vol3/ijdns_2019_15.pdf

Valsesia, Francesca, et al. “The Positive Effect of Not Following Others on Social Media .”  Journal of Marketing Research  , vol. 57, no. 6, Dec. 2020, pp. 1152–1168.

https://www.francescavalsesia.com/uploads/1/0/5/1/105151509/the_positive_effect_of_not_following_others_on_social_media.pdf

Understanding Literacy in Our Lives by Lindsey Matier is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Tips for Online Students , Tips for Students

How Social Media Affects Communication

Updated: July 8, 2024

Published: April 4, 2020

It’s no surprise that the widespread use of social media for communicating ideas, personal and professional stories and experiences has had a profound effect on the overall way people communicate today. Just how has social media affected communication, you ask? In more ways than you may think! But not all are bad — just look at our list of social media effects on communication.

What is Social Media?

Social media can be described as the collection of online platforms that involve sharing and collaborating with an online community by posting, commenting, and interacting with one another. The most commonly used social media platforms today are Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Snapchat.

Photo by Tracy Le Blanc from Pexels

Social media effects on communication.

Social media has profoundly impacted how we communicate, affecting our personal relationships, the way we receive information, and societal discussions. It has increased connectivity, allowing us to stay in touch with others more easily and share our thoughts instantly. However, it also poses challenges like the spread of misinformation and reduced face-to-face interactions. In 2024, with around 5 billion users worldwide, social media continues to shape our communication norms and behaviors, highlighting both its benefits and drawbacks.

Social Media and its Effect on Exposure to Messaging

Social media greatly influences how we encounter and engage with information. These platforms use algorithms to curate content, shaping what we see based on our preferences and behaviors. This curation impacts the diversity and balance of the messaging we encounter, often creating echo chambers where we are exposed to information that reinforces our existing beliefs. Let’s explore how this constant exposure affects our news consumption, personal expression, and reactions to social cues:

Information Overload

Many people tend to binge on social media, spending hours and hours scrolling though sites. Ultimately, this may lead to a constant craving of more internet and more social media consumption. The more people get, the more they want — and it’s hard to stop the cycle.

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Young people read news.

Today, social media plays a significant role in how young people consume news. According to a 2023 Pew Research Center study , about one-third of Americans aged 18 to 29 regularly get their news from TikTok. This platform has seen substantial growth in news consumption among its users. This trend contrasts with other social media platforms where news consumption has either plateaued or declined. Facebook remains a leading source for news, with 30% of U.S. adults regularly using it for this purpose, while YouTube follows closely at 26%​​​​.

For young people, social media is not just a tool for staying connected but also a primary source of information, shaping their understanding of current events and global issues. This shift underscores the evolving landscape of news media, where traditional news outlets must adapt to the preferences of younger audiences who favor digital and social media platforms for their news consumption.

Getting the Full Picture

Stories — a part of Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook — mean that people get the full picture of an event, activity, or occurrence in someone’s life. We no longer just get a snapshot of a home-cooked meal, we might see the entire process from start to finish.

This has changed the way people think about what to post — there is much less thought put into a post when it is a story that will be erased after 24 hours.

Boredom in Conversation

Here’s a sad social media effect on communication. We are becoming bored when we have real, in-person conversations. People have such a need for social media consumption and that instant, colorful feedback only social media can give, they will often become bored during real conversations, resorting to their phones. This can lead to a decrease in the quality and number of meaningful conversations.

Reactions to Non-Verbal, Emotional, and Social Cues

In-person reactions to non-verbal, emotional, or social cues are changing in that people don’t need to respond to these types of communication when they are online. This leads to less experience and awareness of others’ needs based on these types of cues that can only be received from in-person communication.

Social Media and its Effect on Self-Expression

Social media has dramatically transformed how people express themselves. These platforms offer unprecedented opportunities for people to share their thoughts, opinions, and creativity with a global audience. Features such as posts, stories, and multimedia content let us craft and curate our online identities, making self-expression more accessible and diverse than ever before.

Sense of Urgency

No one has to wait for longer than a few hours for a response, and people have come to expect that timeline for conversations. There is so much of a sense of urgency that people are often anxious if they haven’t heard back from a family member, friend, or partner in a number of hours.

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Need to share.

Social media has created a feeling among users that they must share whatever they are doing — from restaurant orders, to concerts, to the books they are reading. This can be a social media positive effect because people are getting more exposure to things they might not otherwise, such as new reads. But it can also be a negative effect as it can urge people to become dependent on posting anything occurring in their own lives and painting those occurrences as rosier than they truly are.

Photo by Vinicius Wiesehofer from Pexels

How we value ourselves.

When people see others having a wonderful life, as represented on social media, they tend to have a negative self-image, and start to devalue their own ways of life. In addition, there is a feeling of needing to paint an inaccurately positive and ‘fun’ version of one’s own life which leads to feelings of negativity about one’s ‘real’ life.

Inside Perspective of Afar

One of the positive effects of social media is the ability to get an intimate view of other cultures and places. With social media, especially on Instagram, users are able to see what others are doing around the world. People are exposed to travel ideas, new cultures, and ways of life unlike before.

Broadcasting Live

Broadcasting live started as a fun, innocent idea to share life’s moments, but it’s transformed to become a large part of political movements, sharing some dark aspects of today’s society. The option to post live videos has created an important platform for serious issues that need to be spoken about.

Personalized Digital Messages

Both Instagram and Snapchat have popularized the highly personalized message. People can now completely change their own faces with selfie filters, or draw pictures to send to friends, and more. Creativity soars, which is a great thing, but people can start to spend too much time personalizing picture messages.

Social Media Communication Style

Social media platforms have their own unique ways of communicating, and people often change how they speak and write to fit in. Platforms like Twitter and Instagram focus on short and visual messages, while LinkedIn is more about professional, text-based content. Knowing these differences can help you engage better with your audience.

1. Summarized Writing

Starting with the limited character text messaging of the 2000s, and nowadays with the 280-character tweet, messages have been getting shorter and more concise. Other areas of communication have adapted for summarized writing as well, such as in shortened work memos, shortened academic communication between students and professors, and shortened messages in advertising.

2. Abbreviations

The abbreviated style of communicating that became popular when text messaging started in the 00’s has continued into online conversations. The rise of text messaging and social media has popularized the use of abbreviations and acronyms.

These shortcuts save time and space but have also infiltrated spoken language, email communication, and even academic writing. While convenient, this trend has sparked debates about its impact on literacy and formal writing skills.

3. Unfiltered Interactions

Have you ever heard the term “Keyboard Warrior”? Social media and internet interactions offer a veil between the person sending and the person receiving the message. These interactions are no longer face to face, and this can lead to some unfiltered conversations as people feel they can say anything with no repercussions.

4. GIFs and Emojis

The introduction of using emojis to illustrate a written message or a GIF to express a reaction may seem fun and innocent, but it is also interfering with our ability to properly craft a written response. It ends up being too tempting to respond with a small picture, or a funny moving photo than to use the mind to create a response with words from scratch.

Photo by Szabo Viktor on Unsplash

5. viral messages.

That quick and easy “share” button on so many social media platforms has led to the phenomenon of “going viral.” Messages, videos, and other content can be easily shared between platforms with millions of people in a matter of days.

The Use of Social Media In Business Communication

Businesses use social media to effectively connect with customers, employees, and stakeholders. These platforms allow companies to build strong communities, engage directly with audiences, and personalize their communication strategies. Social media also helps brands coordinate public relations efforts and adapt to changes in traditional media landscapes. Here are some key ways businesses use social media for communication:

• Building a Community : Companies create communities around their products or services, fostering loyalty and engagement among customers.
• Brands Are Speaking Directly to Audiences : Social media allows brands to communicate directly with their audience, responding to their needs and feedback in real-time.
• Social Media is Changing Traditional Media : Influencers, bloggers, and online personalities can have a significant impact on a brand’s success, often more than traditional media outlets.
• Brands Can Have a More Personal Connection with the Media : Social media enables brands to develop long-term, personal relationships with journalists and media professionals.
• There’s an Opportunity to Coordinate with PR Efforts : Companies can leverage social media for public relations campaigns, finding influencers and collaborators to enhance their reach and impact.

Social media has revolutionized how we communicate, affecting everything from personal expression to business interactions. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have made it easier than ever to share our thoughts, feelings, and experiences with a global audience. They offer unique opportunities for self-expression and identity curation through posts, stories, and multimedia content. However, this shift also brings challenges, such as spreading misinformation and declining in-person conversation quality. As social media shapes our communication norms, navigating these changes thoughtfully is essential.

In business, social media has become an invaluable tool for engagement and marketing. Companies use these platforms to build communities, interact directly with customers, and create more personalized connections with the media. Social media has also transformed traditional media landscapes, allowing brands to coordinate public relations efforts more effectively. Overall, while social media brings opportunities and challenges, its impact on communication is profound, underscoring the need for mindful and strategic use in personal and professional contexts.

What changes has social media brought to communication patterns?

Social media has made communication more immediate and accessible, introducing new forms like emojis and GIFs. It has enabled real-time updates and live interactions, changing the pace and nature of communication.

How has social media influenced interpersonal relationships and interactions?

Social media allows people to stay connected over long distances but can lead to superficial interactions and reduced face-to-face communication quality, sometimes causing feelings of isolation despite being connected online.

What role does social media play in shaping public opinion and discourse?

Social media shapes public opinion by providing a platform for sharing news and opinions, amplifying diverse voices, and allowing rapid dissemination of information. However, it can also spread misinformation quickly and create echo chambers.

How has social media impacted privacy and personal boundaries in communication?

Social media blurs the lines between public and private life, often leading to oversharing and privacy concerns. Users frequently share personal information accessible to a wide audience, subjecting private moments to public scrutiny.

How has social media affected professional communication and networking?

Social media has revolutionized professional networking, with platforms like LinkedIn enabling global connections, job searching, and personal branding. Maintaining a professional online presence and being cautious about public sharing is essential.

How has social media affected the dissemination of information?

Social media enables instant sharing and wide reach of information, making news and updates go viral quickly. However, it also facilitates the spread of misinformation and fake news, making it crucial for users to verify sources.

Can social media be a tool for positive social change and activism?

Yes, social media can drive social change and activism, organizing protests, raising awareness, and mobilizing support for causes. Movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter have gained momentum through social media, demonstrating its impact.

In this article

At UoPeople, our blog writers are thinkers, researchers, and experts dedicated to curating articles relevant to our mission: making higher education accessible to everyone. Read More

Feb 15, 2023

6 Example Essays on Social Media | Advantages, Effects, and Outlines

Got an essay assignment about the effects of social media we got you covered check out our examples and outlines below.

Social media has become one of our society's most prominent ways of communication and information sharing in a very short time. It has changed how we communicate and has given us a platform to express our views and opinions and connect with others. It keeps us informed about the world around us. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn have brought individuals from all over the world together, breaking down geographical borders and fostering a genuinely global community.

However, social media comes with its difficulties. With the rise of misinformation, cyberbullying, and privacy problems, it's critical to utilize these platforms properly and be aware of the risks. Students in the academic world are frequently assigned essays about the impact of social media on numerous elements of our lives, such as relationships, politics, and culture. These essays necessitate a thorough comprehension of the subject matter, critical thinking, and the ability to synthesize and convey information clearly and succinctly.

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So, whether you're a student looking to better your essay writing skills or want to remain up to date on the latest social media advancements, Jenni.ai is here to help. Jenni.ai is the ideal tool for helping you write your finest essay ever, thanks to its simple design, an extensive database of example essays, and cutting-edge AI technology. So, why delay? Sign up for a free trial of Jenni.ai today and begin exploring the worlds of social networking and essay writing!

Want to learn how to write an argumentative essay? Check out these inspiring examples!

We will provide various examples of social media essays so you may get a feel for the genre.

6 Examples of Social Media Essays

Here are 6 examples of Social Media Essays:

The Impact of Social Media on Relationships and Communication

Introduction:.

The way we share information and build relationships has evolved as a direct result of the prevalence of social media in our daily lives. The influence of social media on interpersonal connections and conversation is a hot topic. Although social media has many positive effects, such as bringing people together regardless of physical proximity and making communication quicker and more accessible, it also has a dark side that can affect interpersonal connections and dialogue.

Positive Effects:

Connecting People Across Distances

One of social media's most significant benefits is its ability to connect individuals across long distances. People can use social media platforms to interact and stay in touch with friends and family far away. People can now maintain intimate relationships with those they care about, even when physically separated.

Improved Communication Speed and Efficiency

Additionally, the proliferation of social media sites has accelerated and simplified communication. Thanks to instant messaging, users can have short, timely conversations rather than lengthy ones via email. Furthermore, social media facilitates group communication, such as with classmates or employees, by providing a unified forum for such activities.

Negative Effects:

Decreased Face-to-Face Communication

The decline in in-person interaction is one of social media's most pernicious consequences on interpersonal connections and dialogue. People's reliance on digital communication over in-person contact has increased along with the popularity of social media. Face-to-face interaction has suffered as a result, which has adverse effects on interpersonal relationships and the development of social skills.

Decreased Emotional Intimacy

Another adverse effect of social media on relationships and communication is decreased emotional intimacy. Digital communication lacks the nonverbal cues and facial expressions critical in building emotional connections with others. This can make it more difficult for people to develop close and meaningful relationships, leading to increased loneliness and isolation.

Increased Conflict and Miscommunication

Finally, social media can also lead to increased conflict and miscommunication. The anonymity and distance provided by digital communication can lead to misunderstandings and hurtful comments that might not have been made face-to-face. Additionally, social media can provide a platform for cyberbullying , which can have severe consequences for the victim's mental health and well-being.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the impact of social media on relationships and communication is a complex issue with both positive and negative effects. While social media platforms offer many benefits, such as connecting people across distances and enabling faster and more accessible communication, they also have a dark side that can negatively affect relationships and communication. It is up to individuals to use social media responsibly and to prioritize in-person communication in their relationships and interactions with others.

The Role of Social Media in the Spread of Misinformation and Fake News

Social media has revolutionized the way information is shared and disseminated. However, the ease and speed at which data can be spread on social media also make it a powerful tool for spreading misinformation and fake news. Misinformation and fake news can seriously affect public opinion, influence political decisions, and even cause harm to individuals and communities.

The Pervasiveness of Misinformation and Fake News on Social Media

Misinformation and fake news are prevalent on social media platforms, where they can spread quickly and reach a large audience. This is partly due to the way social media algorithms work, which prioritizes content likely to generate engagement, such as sensational or controversial stories. As a result, false information can spread rapidly and be widely shared before it is fact-checked or debunked.

The Influence of Social Media on Public Opinion

Social media can significantly impact public opinion, as people are likelier to believe the information they see shared by their friends and followers. This can lead to a self-reinforcing cycle, where misinformation and fake news are spread and reinforced, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

The Challenge of Correcting Misinformation and Fake News

Correcting misinformation and fake news on social media can be a challenging task. This is partly due to the speed at which false information can spread and the difficulty of reaching the same audience exposed to the wrong information in the first place. Additionally, some individuals may be resistant to accepting correction, primarily if the incorrect information supports their beliefs or biases.

In conclusion, the function of social media in disseminating misinformation and fake news is complex and urgent. While social media has revolutionized the sharing of information, it has also made it simpler for false information to propagate and be widely believed. Individuals must be accountable for the information they share and consume, and social media firms must take measures to prevent the spread of disinformation and fake news on their platforms.

The Effects of Social Media on Mental Health and Well-Being

Social media has become an integral part of modern life, with billions of people around the world using platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to stay connected with others and access information. However, while social media has many benefits, it can also negatively affect mental health and well-being.

Comparison and Low Self-Esteem

One of the key ways that social media can affect mental health is by promoting feelings of comparison and low self-esteem. People often present a curated version of their lives on social media, highlighting their successes and hiding their struggles. This can lead others to compare themselves unfavorably, leading to feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem.

Cyberbullying and Online Harassment

Another way that social media can negatively impact mental health is through cyberbullying and online harassment. Social media provides a platform for anonymous individuals to harass and abuse others, leading to feelings of anxiety, fear, and depression.

Social Isolation

Despite its name, social media can also contribute to feelings of isolation. At the same time, people may have many online friends but need more meaningful in-person connections and support. This can lead to feelings of loneliness and depression.

Addiction and Overuse

Finally, social media can be addictive, leading to overuse and negatively impacting mental health and well-being. People may spend hours each day scrolling through their feeds, neglecting other important areas of their lives, such as work, family, and self-care.

In sum, social media has positive and negative consequences on one's psychological and emotional well-being. Realizing this, and taking measures like reducing one's social media use, reaching out to loved ones for help, and prioritizing one's well-being, are crucial. In addition, it's vital that social media giants take ownership of their platforms and actively encourage excellent mental health and well-being.

The Use of Social Media in Political Activism and Social Movements

Social media has recently become increasingly crucial in political action and social movements. Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have given people new ways to express themselves, organize protests, and raise awareness about social and political issues.

Raising Awareness and Mobilizing Action

One of the most important uses of social media in political activity and social movements has been to raise awareness about important issues and mobilize action. Hashtags such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter, for example, have brought attention to sexual harassment and racial injustice, respectively. Similarly, social media has been used to organize protests and other political actions, allowing people to band together and express themselves on a bigger scale.

Connecting with like-minded individuals

A second method in that social media has been utilized in political activity and social movements is to unite like-minded individuals. Through social media, individuals can join online groups, share knowledge and resources, and work with others to accomplish shared objectives. This has been especially significant for geographically scattered individuals or those without access to traditional means of political organizing.

Challenges and Limitations

As a vehicle for political action and social movements, social media has faced many obstacles and restrictions despite its many advantages. For instance, the propagation of misinformation and fake news on social media can impede attempts to disseminate accurate and reliable information. In addition, social media corporations have been condemned for censorship and insufficient protection of user rights.

In conclusion, social media has emerged as a potent instrument for political activism and social movements, giving voice to previously unheard communities and galvanizing support for change. Social media presents many opportunities for communication and collaboration. Still, users and institutions must be conscious of the risks and limitations of these tools to promote their responsible and productive usage.

The Potential Privacy Concerns Raised by Social Media Use and Data Collection Practices

With billions of users each day on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, social media has ingrained itself into every aspect of our lives. While these platforms offer a straightforward method to communicate with others and exchange information, they also raise significant concerns over data collecting and privacy. This article will examine the possible privacy issues posed by social media use and data-gathering techniques.

Data Collection and Sharing

The gathering and sharing of personal data are significant privacy issues brought up by social media use. Social networking sites gather user data, including details about their relationships, hobbies, and routines. This information is made available to third-party businesses for various uses, such as marketing and advertising. This can lead to serious concerns about who has access to and uses our personal information.

Lack of Control Over Personal Information

The absence of user control over personal information is a significant privacy issue brought up by social media usage. Social media makes it challenging to limit who has access to and how data is utilized once it has been posted. Sensitive information may end up being extensively disseminated and may be used maliciously as a result.

Personalized Marketing

Social media companies utilize the information they gather about users to target them with adverts relevant to their interests and usage patterns. Although this could be useful, it might also cause consumers to worry about their privacy since they might feel that their personal information is being used without their permission. Furthermore, there are issues with the integrity of the data being used to target users and the possibility of prejudice based on individual traits.

Government Surveillance

Using social media might spark worries about government surveillance. There are significant concerns regarding privacy and free expression when governments in some nations utilize social media platforms to follow and monitor residents.

In conclusion, social media use raises significant concerns regarding data collecting and privacy. While these platforms make it easy to interact with people and exchange information, they also gather a lot of personal information, which raises questions about who may access it and how it will be used. Users should be aware of these privacy issues and take precautions to safeguard their personal information, such as exercising caution when choosing what details to disclose on social media and keeping their information sharing with other firms to a minimum.

The Ethical and Privacy Concerns Surrounding Social Media Use And Data Collection

Our use of social media to communicate with loved ones, acquire information, and even conduct business has become a crucial part of our everyday lives. The extensive use of social media does, however, raise some ethical and privacy issues that must be resolved. The influence of social media use and data collecting on user rights, the accountability of social media businesses, and the need for improved regulation are all topics that will be covered in this article.

Effect on Individual Privacy:

Social networking sites gather tons of personal data from their users, including delicate information like search history, location data, and even health data. Each user's detailed profile may be created with this data and sold to advertising or used for other reasons. Concerns regarding the privacy of personal information might arise because social media businesses can use this data to target users with customized adverts.

Additionally, individuals might need to know how much their personal information is being gathered and exploited. Data breaches or the unauthorized sharing of personal information with other parties may result in instances where sensitive information is exposed. Users should be aware of the privacy rules of social media firms and take precautions to secure their data.

Responsibility of Social Media Companies:

Social media firms should ensure that they responsibly and ethically gather and use user information. This entails establishing strong security measures to safeguard sensitive information and ensuring users are informed of what information is being collected and how it is used.

Many social media businesses, nevertheless, have come under fire for not upholding these obligations. For instance, the Cambridge Analytica incident highlighted how Facebook users' personal information was exploited for political objectives without their knowledge. This demonstrates the necessity of social media corporations being held responsible for their deeds and ensuring that they are safeguarding the security and privacy of their users.

Better Regulation Is Needed

There is a need for tighter regulation in this field, given the effect, social media has on individual privacy as well as the obligations of social media firms. The creation of laws and regulations that ensure social media companies are gathering and using user information ethically and responsibly, as well as making sure users are aware of their rights and have the ability to control the information that is being collected about them, are all part of this.

Additionally, legislation should ensure that social media businesses are held responsible for their behavior, for example, by levying fines for data breaches or the unauthorized use of personal data. This will provide social media businesses with a significant incentive to prioritize their users' privacy and security and ensure they are upholding their obligations.

In conclusion, social media has fundamentally changed how we engage and communicate with one another, but this increased convenience also raises several ethical and privacy issues. Essential concerns that need to be addressed include the effect of social media on individual privacy, the accountability of social media businesses, and the requirement for greater regulation to safeguard user rights. We can make everyone's online experience safer and more secure by looking more closely at these issues.

In conclusion, social media is a complex and multifaceted topic that has recently captured the world's attention. With its ever-growing influence on our lives, it's no surprise that it has become a popular subject for students to explore in their writing. Whether you are writing an argumentative essay on the impact of social media on privacy, a persuasive essay on the role of social media in politics, or a descriptive essay on the changes social media has brought to the way we communicate, there are countless angles to approach this subject.

However, writing a comprehensive and well-researched essay on social media can be daunting. It requires a thorough understanding of the topic and the ability to articulate your ideas clearly and concisely. This is where Jenni.ai comes in. Our AI-powered tool is designed to help students like you save time and energy and focus on what truly matters - your education. With Jenni.ai , you'll have access to a wealth of examples and receive personalized writing suggestions and feedback.

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Likes, Shares, and Beyond: Exploring the Impact of Social Media in Essays

Table of contents

• 1 Definition and Explanation of a Social Media Essay
• 2.1 Topics for an Essay on Social Media and Mental Health
• 2.2 Social Dynamics
• 2.3 Social Media Essay Topics about Business
• 2.4 Politics
• 3 Research and Analysis
• 4 Structure Social Media Essay
• 5 Tips for Writing Essays on Social Media
• 6 Examples of Social Media Essays
• 7 Navigating the Social Media Labyrinth: Key Insights

In the world of digital discourse, our article stands as a beacon for those embarking on the intellectual journey of writing about social media. It is a comprehensive guide for anyone venturing into the dynamic world of social media essays. Offering various topics about social media and practical advice on selecting engaging subjects, the piece delves into research methodologies, emphasizing the importance of credible sources and trend analysis. Furthermore, it provides invaluable tips on structuring essays, including crafting compelling thesis statements and hooks balancing factual information with personal insights. Concluding with examples of exemplary essays, this article is an essential tool for students and researchers alike, aiding in navigating the intricate landscape of its impact on society.

Definition and Explanation of a Social Media Essay

Essentially, when one asks “What is a social media essay?” they are referring to an essay that analyzes, critiques, or discusses its various dimensions and effects. These essays can range from the psychological implications of its use to its influence on politics, business strategies, and social dynamics.

A social media essay is an academic or informational piece that explores various aspects of social networking platforms and their impact on individuals and society.

In crafting such an essay, writers blend personal experiences, analytical perspectives, and empirical data to paint a full picture of social media’s role. For instance, a social media essay example could examine how these platforms mold public opinion, revolutionize digital marketing strategies, or raise questions about data privacy ethics. Through a mix of thorough research, critical analysis, and personal reflections, these essays provide a layered understanding of one of today’s most pivotal digital phenomena.

Great Social Media Essay Topics

When it comes to selecting a topic for your essay, consider its current relevance, societal impact, and personal interest. Whether exploring the effects on business, politics, mental health, or social dynamics, these social media essay titles offer a range of fascinating social media topic ideas. Each title encourages an exploration of the intricate relationship between social media and our daily lives. A well-chosen topic should enable you to investigate the impact of social media, debate ethical dilemmas, and offer unique insights. Striking the right balance in scope, these topics should align with the objectives of your essays, ensuring an informative and captivating read.

Topics for an Essay on Social Media and Mental Health

• The Impact of Social Media on Self-Esteem.
• Unpacking Social Media Addiction: Causes, Effects, and Solutions.
• Analyzing Social Media’s Role as a Catalyst for Teen Depression and Anxiety.
• Social Media and Mental Health Awareness: A Force for Good?
• The Psychological Impacts of Cyberbullying in the Social Media Age.
• The Effects of Social Media on Sleep and Mental Health.
• Strategies for Positive Mental Health in the Era of Social Media.
• Real-Life vs. Social Media Interactions: An Essay on Mental Health Aspects.
• The Mental Well-Being Benefits of a Social Media Detox.
• Social Comparison Psychology in the Realm of Social Media.

Social Dynamics

• Social Media and its Impact on Interpersonal Communication Skills: A Cause and Effect Essay on Social Media.
• Cultural Integration through Social Media: A New Frontier.
• Interpersonal Communication in the Social Media Era: Evolving Skills and Challenges.
• Community Building and Social Activism: The Role of Social Media.
• Youth Culture and Behavior: The Influence of Social Media.
• Privacy and Personal Boundaries: Navigating Social Media Challenges.
• Language Evolution in Social Media: A Dynamic Shift.
• Leveraging Social Media for Social Change and Awareness.
• Family Dynamics in the Social Media Landscape.
• Friendship in the Age of Social Media: An Evolving Concept.

Social Media Essay Topics about Business

• Influencer Marketing on Social Media: Impact and Ethics.
• Brand Building and Customer Engagement: The Power of Social Media.
• The Ethics and Impact of Influencer Marketing in Social Media.
• Measuring Business Success Through Social Media Analytics.
• The Changing Face of Advertising in the Social Media World.
• Revolutionizing Customer Service in the Social Media Era.
• Market Research and Consumer Insights: The Social Media Advantage.
• Small Businesses and Startups: The Impact of Social Media.
• Ethical Dimensions of Social Media Advertising.
• Consumer Behavior and Social Media: An Intricate Relationship.
• The Role of Social Media in Government Transparency and Accountability
• Social Media’s Impact on Political Discourse and Public Opinion.
• Combating Fake News on Social Media: Implications for Democracy.
• Political Mobilization and Activism: The Power of Social Media.
• Social Media: A New Arena for Political Debates and Discussions.
• Government Transparency and Accountability in the Social Media Age.
• Voter Behavior and Election Outcomes: The Social Media Effect.
• Political Polarization: A Social Media Perspective.
• Tackling Political Misinformation on Social Media Platforms.
• The Ethics of Political Advertising in the Social Media Landscape.
• Memes as a Marketing Tool: Successes, Failures, and Pros of Social Media.
• Shaping Public Opinion with Memes: A Social Media Phenomenon.
• Political Satire and Social Commentary through Memes.
• The Psychology Behind Memes: Understanding Their Viral Nature.
• The Influence of Memes on Language and Communication.
• Tracing the History and Evolution of Internet Memes.
• Memes in Online Communities: Culture and Subculture Formation.
• Navigating Copyright and Legal Issues in the World of Memes.
• Memes as a Marketing Strategy: Analyzing Successes and Failures.
• Memes and Global Cultural Exchange: A Social Media Perspective.

Research and Analysis

In today’s fast-paced information era, the ability to sift through vast amounts of data and pinpoint reliable information is more crucial than ever. Research and analysis in the digital age hinge on identifying credible sources and understanding the dynamic landscape. Initiating your research with reputable websites is key. Academic journals, government publications, and established news outlets are gold standards for reliable information. Online databases and libraries provide a wealth of peer-reviewed articles and books. For websites, prioritize those with domains like .edu, .gov, or .org, but always critically assess the content for bias and accuracy. Turning to social media, it’s a trove of real-time data and trends but requires a discerning approach. Focus on verified accounts and official pages of recognized entities.

Analyzing current trends and user behavior is crucial for staying relevant. Platforms like Google Trends, Twitter Analytics, and Facebook Insights offer insights into what’s resonating with audiences. These tools help identify trending topics, hashtags, and the type of content that engages users. Remember, it reflects and influences public opinion and behavior. Observing user interactions, comments, and shares can provide a deeper understanding of consumer attitudes and preferences. This analysis is invaluable for tailoring content, developing marketing strategies, and staying ahead in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Structure Social Media Essay

In constructing a well-rounded structure for a social media essay, it’s crucial to begin with a strong thesis statement. This sets the foundation for essays about social media and guides the narrative.

Thesis Statements

A thesis statement is the backbone of your essay, outlining the main argument or position you will explore throughout the text. It guides the narrative, providing a clear direction for your essay and helping readers understand the focus of your analysis or argumentation. Here are some thesis statements:

• “Social media has reshaped communication, fostering a connected world through instant information sharing, yet it has come at the cost of privacy and genuine social interaction.”
• “While social media platforms act as potent instruments for societal and political transformation, they present significant challenges to mental health and the authenticity of information.”
• “The role of social media in contemporary business transcends mere marketing; it impacts customer relationships, shapes brand perception, and influences operational strategies.”

Social Media Essay Hooks

Social media essay hooks are pivotal in grabbing the reader’s attention right from the beginning and compelling them to continue reading. A well-crafted hook acts as the engaging entry point to your essay, setting the tone and framing the context for the discussion that will follow.

Here are some effective social media essay hooks:

• “In a world where a day without social media is unimaginable, its pervasive presence is both a testament to its utility and a source of various societal issues.”
• “Each scroll, like, and share on social media platforms carries the weight of influencing public opinion and shaping global conversations.”
• “Social media has become so ingrained in our daily lives that its absence would render the modern world unrecognizable.”

Introduction:

Navigating the digital landscape, an introduction for a social media essay serves as a map, charting the terrain of these platforms’ broad influence across various life aspects. This section should briefly summarize the scope of the essay, outlining both the benefits and the drawbacks, and segue into the thesis statement.

When we move to the body part of the essay, it offers an opportunity for an in-depth exploration and discussion. It can be structured first to examine the positive aspects of social media, including improved communication channels, innovative marketing strategies, and the facilitation of social movements. Following this, the essay should address the negative implications, such as issues surrounding privacy, the impact on mental health, and the proliferation of misinformation. Incorporating real-world examples, statistical evidence, and expert opinions throughout the essay will provide substantial support for the arguments presented.

Conclusion:

It is the summit of the essay’s exploration, offering a moment to look back on the terrain covered. The conclusion should restate the thesis in light of the discussions presented in the body. It should summarize the key points made, reflecting on the multifaceted influence of social media in contemporary society. The essay should end with a thought-provoking statement or question about the future role of social media, tying back to the initial hooks and ensuring a comprehensive and engaging end to the discourse.

Tips for Writing Essays on Social Media

In the ever-evolving realm of digital dialogue, mastering the art of essay writing on social media is akin to navigating a complex web of virtual interactions and influences. Writing an essay on social media requires a blend of analytical insight, factual accuracy, and a nuanced understanding of the digital landscape. Here are some tips to craft a compelling essay:

• Incorporate Statistical Data and Case Studies

Integrate statistical data and relevant case studies to lend credibility to your arguments. For instance, usage statistics, growth trends, and demographic information can provide a solid foundation for your points. Case studies, especially those highlighting its impact on businesses, politics, or societal change, offer concrete examples that illustrate your arguments. Ensure your sources are current and reputable to maintain the essay’s integrity.

• Balance Personal Insights with Factual Information

While personal insights can add a unique perspective to your essay, balancing them with factual information is crucial. Personal observations and experiences can make your essay relatable and engaging, but grounding these insights in factual data ensures credibility and helps avoid bias.

• Respect Privacy

When discussing real-world examples or case studies, especially those involving individuals or specific organizations, be mindful of privacy concerns. Avoid sharing sensitive information, and always respect the confidentiality of your sources.

• Maintain an Objective Tone

It is a polarizing topic, but maintaining an objective tone in your essay is essential. Avoid emotional language and ensure that your arguments are supported by evidence. An objective approach allows readers to form opinions based on the information presented.

• Use Jargon Wisely

While using social media-specific terminology can make your essay relevant and informed, it’s important to use jargon judiciously. Avoid overuse and ensure that terms are clearly defined for readers who might not be familiar with their lingo.

Examples of Social Media Essays

Title: The Dichotomy of Social Media: A Tool for Connection and a Platform for Division

Introduction

In the digital era, social media has emerged as a paradoxical entity. It serves as a bridge connecting distant corners of the world and a battleground for conflicting ideologies. This essay explores this dichotomy, utilizing statistical data, case studies, and real-world examples to understand its multifaceted impact on society.

Section 1 – Connection Through Social Media:

Social media’s primary allure lies in its ability to connect. A report by the Pew Research Center shows that 72% of American adults use some form of social media, where interactions transcend geographical and cultural barriers. This statistic highlights the platform’s popularity and role in fostering global connections. An exemplary case study of this is the #MeToo movement. Originating as a hashtag on Twitter, it grew into a global campaign against sexual harassment, demonstrating its power to mobilize and unify people for a cause.

However, personal insights suggest that while it bridges distances, it can also create a sense of isolation. Users often report feeling disconnected from their immediate surroundings, hinting at the platform’s double-edged nature. Despite enabling connections on a global scale, social media can paradoxically alienate individuals from their local context.

Section 2 – The Platform for Division

Conversely, social media can amplify societal divisions. Its algorithm-driven content can create echo chambers, reinforcing users’ preexisting beliefs. A study by the Knight Foundation found that it tends to polarize users, especially in political contexts, leading to increased division. This is further exacerbated by the spread of misinformation, as seen in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election case, where it was used to disseminate false information, influencing public opinion and deepening societal divides.

Respecting privacy and maintaining an objective tone, it is crucial to acknowledge that social media is not divisive. Its influence is determined by both its usage and content. Thus, it is the obligation of both platforms to govern content and consumers to access information.

In conclusion, it is a complex tool. It has the unparalleled ability to connect individuals worldwide while possessing the power to divide. Balancing the personal insights with factual information presented, it’s clear that its influence is a reflection of how society chooses to wield it. As digital citizens, it is imperative to use it judiciously, understanding its potential to unite and divide.

Delving into the intricacies of social media’s impact necessitates not just a keen eye for detail but an analytical mindset to dissect its multifaceted layers. Analysis is paramount because it allows us to navigate through the vast sea of information, distinguishing between mere opinion and well-supported argumentation.

This essay utilizes tips for writing a social media essay. Statistical data from the Pew Research Center and the Knight Foundation lend credibility to the arguments. The use of the #MeToo movement as a case study illustrates its positive impact, while the reference to the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election demonstrates its negative aspects. The essay balances personal insights with factual information, respects privacy, maintains an objective tone, and appropriately uses jargon. The structure is clear and logical, with distinct sections for each aspect of its impact, making it an informative and well-rounded analysis of its role in modern society.

Navigating the Social Media Labyrinth: Key Insights

In the digital age, the impact of social media on various aspects of human life has become a critical area of study. This article has provided a comprehensive guide for crafting insightful and impactful essays on this subject, blending personal experiences with analytical rigor. Through a detailed examination of topics ranging from mental health and social dynamics to business and politics, it has underscored the dual nature of social media as both a unifying and divisive force. The inclusion of statistical data and case studies has enriched the discussion, offering a grounded perspective on the nuanced effects of these platforms.

The tips and structures outlined serve as a valuable framework for writers to navigate the complex interplay between social media and societal shifts. As we conclude, it’s clear that understanding social media’s role requires a delicate balance of critical analysis and open-mindedness. Reflecting on its influence, this article guides the creation of thoughtful essays and encourages readers to ponder the future of digital interactions and their implications for the fabric of society.

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Writing a Social Media Essay: Tips and Examples

In an era where a single tweet can spark a global conversation and an Instagram post can redefine trends, it's fascinating to note that the average person spends approximately 2 hours and 31 minutes per day on social media platforms. That's more than 900 hours a year devoted to scrolling, liking, and sharing in the vast digital landscape. As we find ourselves deeply intertwined in the fabric of online communities, the significance of understanding and articulating the dynamics of social media through the written word, particularly in an essay on social media, becomes increasingly apparent. So, why embark on the journey of crafting an essay on this ubiquitous aspect of modern life? Join us as we unravel the layers of social media's impact, explore its nuances, and discover the art of conveying these insights through the written form.

Short Description

In this article, we'll explore how to write an essay on social media and the purpose behind these narratives while also delving into a myriad of engaging topics. From the heartbeat of online connections to the rhythm of effective storytelling, we'll guide you organically through the process, sharing insights on structure, approach, and the creative essence that makes each essay unique. And if you're seeking assistance, pondering - ' I wish I could find someone to write my essay ,' we'll also furnish example essays to empower you to tackle such tasks independently.

Why Write a Social Media Essay

In a world buzzing with hashtags, filters, and the constant hum of notifications, the idea of sitting down to craft an essay about social media might seem as out of place as a cassette tape in a streaming era. Yet, there's something oddly therapeutic, almost rebellious, about pausing in the midst of 280-character wisdom to delve deeper into the why behind our digital existence.

So, what is social media essay, and what's the purpose of writing it? Well, it's more than just an exercise in intellectual curiosity. It's a personal journey, a reflective pause in the ceaseless scroll. While writing the essay, we gain the power to articulate the intangible, to breathe life into the pixels that dance across our screens. It's an opportunity to make sense of the chaos, to find meaning in the memes, and perhaps, in the process, to uncover a bit more about ourselves in this digital wilderness.

Let's face it - our online lives are a fast-paced carousel of memes, viral challenges, and carefully curated selfies. So, why bother wrestling with words and paragraphs in a world where brevity is king? The answer lies in the art of unraveling the digital tapestry that envelops us.

There's a magic in articulating the dance between the profound and the mundane that occurs within the confines of our screens. An essay becomes a lens, focusing our attention on the subtleties of social media dynamics – the inside jokes that become global phenomena, the ripple effect of a well-timed retweet, and the silent conversations unfolding in the comment sections.

6 Key Tips for Crafting a Social Media Essay

Now that we've set sail into the realm of essays on the digital landscape, it's only fair to equip ourselves with a few trusty tools for the journey. Think of these tips as your compass, helping you navigate the sometimes choppy, often unpredictable waters of crafting an essay on social media.

• Embrace Your Authentic Voice: Just like your favorite Instagram filter can't hide the real you, your essay should reflect your genuine thoughts and feelings. Don't be afraid to let your unique voice shine through – whether it's witty, contemplative, or a delightful blend of both.
• Dive into the Details: Social media isn't just about the grand gestures; it's the small, often unnoticed details that weave the most compelling narratives. Explore the minutiae of your online experiences – the peculiar hashtags, the quirky bios, and the unexpected connections that leave a lasting imprint.
• Craft Your Hashtag Haiku: Much like poetry, brevity can be your ally in social media essays. Think of hashtags as haikus – succinct, impactful, and capable of conveying a universe of meaning in just a few characters. Choose them wisely.
• Engage with the Comments Section: The comments section is the lively pub where digital conversations unfold. Dive in, clink glasses, and engage with the diverse perspectives swirling around. It's in these interactions that the real magic happens – where ideas collide, evolve, and sometimes, transform.
• Navigate the Memescape: Memes are the folklore of the digital age, carrying tales of humor, irony, and cultural resonance. Don't shy away from exploring the memescape in your essay. Unravel the layers, decipher the symbolism, and appreciate the humor that often holds up a mirror to society.
• Be Mindful of the Clickbait Pitfalls: While clickbait might be the flashy neon sign on the digital highway, it's essential to tread carefully. Ensure your essay isn't just a sensational headline but a thoughtful exploration that goes beyond the surface.

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Social Media Essay Structure

In the age of viral tweets and digital conversations, tackling the essay format is more than just stringing words together—it's about creating a roadmap. As we navigate this landscape of likes and retweets, understanding the structural foundations becomes key. So, let's cut through the noise and explore the practical aspects of how to write a social media essay that mirrors the rhythm of our online experiences.

Form an Outline

Now that we've acknowledged the importance of structure in your essay, the next step is to build a solid roadmap. Think of it like planning a road trip; you wouldn't hit the highway without a map or GPS, right? Similarly, creating an outline for your essay gives you a clear direction and ensures your thoughts flow smoothly.

So, whether you decide to order an essay online or tackle it yourself, here's a simple way to go about it:

Introduction (Where You Start):

• Briefly introduce the topic.
• State your social media essay thesis or main idea.
• Example: 'Let's begin by introducing the impact of social media on modern communication, focusing on its role in shaping opinions and fostering connections.'

Body Paragraphs (The Journey):

• Each paragraph should cover a specific social media essay argument and point.
• Use examples or evidence to support your ideas.
• Example: 'The first aspect we'll explore is how social media amplifies voices. For instance, hashtags like #ClimateAction mobilize a global audience around environmental issues.'

Transitions (Smooth Turns):

• Guide your readers from one point to the next.
• Ensure a logical flow between paragraphs.
• Example: 'Having discussed the amplification of voices, let's now shift our focus to the influence of social media in spreading information.'

Counter Arguments (Addressing Detours):

• Acknowledge different perspectives.
• Counter Arguments with evidence or reasoning.
• Example: 'While social media can be a powerful tool for connectivity, critics argue that it also contributes to the spread of misinformation. Let's explore this counterargument and analyze its validity.'

Conclusion (The Destination):

• Summarize your main points.
• Restate your thesis and leave a lasting impression.
• Example: 'In conclusion, social media serves as both a bridge and a battleground of ideas. Understanding its nuances is crucial in navigating this digital landscape.'

Creating an outline for your essay not only streamlines the writing process but also ensures your readers embark on a clear and organized journey through your insights on social media. If you're exploring more options, you might even want to buy thesis for more convenience.

Make a Social Media Essay Introduction

Begin your introduction by presenting a concise overview of the key theme or topic you're addressing. Clearly state the main purpose or argument of your essay, giving readers a roadmap for what to expect. Integrate social media essay hooks like a relevant statistic, quote, or provocative question to capture attention.

For instance, if your essay is about the impact of social media on personal relationships, you might start by mentioning a statistic on the percentage of couples who met online.

Social Media Essay Body Paragraph

Structure each social media essay body paragraph around a specific aspect of your chosen topic. Start with a clear topic sentence that encapsulates the main idea of the paragraph. Provide concrete examples, data, or case studies to support your points and strengthen your argument. Maintain a logical flow between paragraphs by using effective transitions.

If your essay focuses on the positive effects of social media on business marketing, dedicate a paragraph to showcasing successful campaigns and how they leveraged different platforms.

Social Media Essay Conclusion

In your conclusion, succinctly recap the main points discussed in the body paragraphs. Reinforce your thesis statement and emphasize its broader implications. Rather than introducing new information, use the conclusion to leave a lasting impression on your readers. Consider prompting further thought or suggesting practical applications of your findings.

For instance, if your essay examined the impact of social media on political discourse, conclude by encouraging readers to critically evaluate the information they encounter online and actively engage in constructive conversations.

Proofread and Revise

In the process of writing social media essay, proofreading and revising are indispensable steps that can significantly enhance the overall quality of your work. Begin by meticulously checking for grammatical errors, ensuring that your sentences are clear and concise. Pay attention to the flow of your ideas, confirming that each paragraph seamlessly transitions into the next.

During the proofreading phase, keep an eye out for any inconsistencies in tone or style. This is an opportunity to refine your language and ensure that it aligns with the intended voice of your essay. Look for repetitive phrases or unnecessary words that might detract from the clarity of your message.

As you revise, consider the effectiveness of your hook. Does it still resonate as strongly as you intended? Can it be tweaked to better captivate your audience? A compelling hook sets the tone for your entire essay, so invest time in perfecting this crucial element.

Furthermore, don't hesitate to seek feedback from peers or mentors. Another perspective can provide valuable insights into areas that may need improvement. Fresh eyes often catch nuances that the writer might overlook. Alternatively, you might also explore the option to buy coursework for additional support.

Social Media Essay Topics

In the vast realm of social media, where every like and share contributes to the digital narrative, choosing the right essay topic becomes a crucial compass for exploration. Let's explore thought-provoking topics that not only capture attention but also invite insightful discussions on the intricacies of our interconnected world.

Impact on Society:

• The Role of Social Media in Redefining Friendship and Social Bonds
• How Has TikTok Influenced Global Pop Culture Trends?
• The Impact of Social Media on Political Polarization
• Social Media and Mental Health: Exploring the Connection
• The Evolution of Language on Social Media Platforms
• Examining the Influence of Social Media on Body Image
• Fake News and Its Proliferation on Social Media
• Social Media and the Rise of Influencer Marketing
• The Intersection of Social Media and Dating Apps
• Has Social Media Narrowed or Expanded Cultural Perspectives?
• The Role of Social Media in Fostering Global Communities
• The Influence of Social Media on Consumer Behavior
• Analyzing the Impact of Social Media on News Consumption
• The Rise of 'Cancel Culture' on Social Media Platforms
• Social Media and Its Role in Spreading Disinformation
• The Impact of Social Media on Language and Communication Skills
• Social Media and its Influence on Political Movements
• The Relationship Between Social Media Use and Sleep Patterns
• Social Media and the Accessibility of Educational Resources
• The Cultural Significance of Memes on Social Media

Individual and Identity:

• The Impact of Social Media Addiction on Personal Relationships and Intimacy
• Self-Expression and Authenticity on Social Networking Sites
• Social Media and Its Influence on Teenage Identity Formation
• The Role of Social Media in Shaping Beauty Standards
• Navigating Online Dating and Relationships in the Social Media Age
• The Impact of Social Media on Parenting Styles
• Social Media and Its Influence on Body Positivity Movements
• The Perception of Success: Social Media's Role in Achievement Culture
• Social Media and the Construction of Online Persona vs. Real Self
• Social Media and Its Influence on Lifestyle Choices
• The Role of Social Media in Shaping Career Aspirations
• The Intersection of Mental Health Narratives and Social Media
• The Impact of Social Media on Self-Esteem and Well-Being
• How Social Media Influences Gender Identity and Expression
• Exploring the Concept of Digital Detox in the Social Media Era
• The Role of Social Media in Shaping Cultural Identity
• The Connection Between Social Media and Impulse Buying
• Social Media and Its Influence on Dietary Choices
• Balancing Privacy and Self-Disclosure on Social Media
• The Impact of Social Media on Friendships Over Time

Digital Activism and Advocacy:

• The Effectiveness of Hashtag Movements in Promoting Social Change
• Social Media and Its Role in Amplifying Underrepresented Voices
• The Impact of Social Media on Global Environmental Activism
• Online Activism: The Evolution from Clicktivism to Concrete Action
• The Role of Social Media in Advancing LGBTQ+ Rights
• Social Media and Its Impact on Anti-Racism Movements
• Analyzing the Challenges of Digital Advocacy in Authoritarian Regimes
• Social Media and the Global Fight Against Cyberbullying
• The Intersection of Social Media and Mental Health Advocacy
• Examining the Role of Social Media in Humanitarian Campaigns
• Crowdsourcing for Change: How Social Media Fuels Fundraising
• The Challenges of Digital Activism in the Age of Information Overload
• Social Media and Its Impact on Disability Advocacy
• The Role of Social Media in Combating Gender-Based Violence
• Online Petitions and Their Influence on Policy Change
• Exploring the Intersection of Social Media and Animal Rights Activism
• The Impact of Social Media on Indigenous Rights Advocacy
• Digital Advocacy and Its Role in Healthcare Reform
• Social Media's Influence on Youth Activism
• Navigating Challenges in Allyship on Social Media Platforms

Privacy and Ethics:

• The Implications of Facial Recognition Technology on Social Media
• Social Media Platforms and the Ethics of User Data Collection
• The Role of Social Media in Combating Deepfakes
• Balancing Freedom of Speech and Moderation on Social Media
• Social Media and the Challenges of Regulating Disinformation
• Ethical Considerations in Targeted Advertising on Social Media
• The Impact of Social Media Algorithms on User Behavior
• Social Media and the Right to Privacy: Where to Draw the Line?
• The Influence of Social Media on Political Manipulation and Propaganda
• Data Security Concerns in the Era of Social Media
• The Ethics of Social Media Influencer Marketing
• Social Media and Its Role in Combating Cyberbullying
• The Impact of Social Media on Juror Bias in Legal Cases
• Exploring the Ethics of Incorporating Social Media Usage in Hiring Decisions by Employers
• Social Media and Its Role in Combating Hate Speech
• Balancing Personalization with Privacy in Social Media Websites
• The Influence of Social Media on Public Perceptions of Law Enforcement
• Social Media and the Challenges of Content Moderation
• Addressing Online Harassment: Ethical Considerations for Platforms
• The Responsibility of Social Media Platforms in Protecting User Privacy

Future Trends and Innovations:

• The Future of Social Media: Emerging Platforms and Trends
• The Role of Augmented Reality (AR) in Shaping the Future of Social Media
• Virtual Reality (VR) and Its Potential Impact on Social Media Engagement
• The Rise of NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) and Social Media
• Social Media and the Evolution of Live Streaming Culture
• The Impact of Voice Search and Voice Assistants on Social Media
• Social Commerce: The Future of E-Commerce Through Social Media
• Exploring the Influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on Social Media
• The Role of Blockchain Technology in Enhancing Social Media Security
• Social Media and the Integration of Virtual Influencers
• The Future of Social Media Content: Short-Form vs. Long-Form
• The Influence of User-Generated Content on Future Social Media Trends
• Social Media and the Adoption of 5G Technology
• The Potential of Gamification in Shaping Social Media Engagement
• The Impact of Social Media on the Future of Work and Remote Collaboration
• Exploring the Relationship Between Social Media and Mental Health Apps
• The Influence of User Privacy Concerns on Future Social Media Developments
• Social Media and the Role of Ephemeral Content in Communication
• The Intersection of Social Media and Virtual Events
• Predicting the Next Wave of Social Media Influencer Trends

If these topics piqued your interest, you'll likely find persuasive essay topics equally fascinating! Dive into our article for a variety of options that might just spark your curiosity and inspire your next writing venture.

Social Media Essay Example

Crafting a standout essay isn't just about the words; it's about weaving a narrative that grabs your reader's attention. Before we say our goodbyes, why not take a peek at our sample essays? Our seasoned writers poured their expertise into creating persuasive pieces, offering you insights into both how to write an essay on social media and the kind of polished language that can elevate your own writing.

Wrapping Up

As our college essay service experts conclude this article, we've journeyed through the emotional complexities, societal reflections, and transformative potentials embedded in our digital narratives. An essay on social media is a portal into the intricate dance of our online lives, urging introspection, empathy, and an awareness of diverse stories. Let your essays authentically reflect, sparking conversations that enrich our collective experience in this ever-evolving digital realm.

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Daniel Parker

is a seasoned educational writer focusing on scholarship guidance, research papers, and various forms of academic essays including reflective and narrative essays. His expertise also extends to detailed case studies. A scholar with a background in English Literature and Education, Daniel’s work on EssayPro blog aims to support students in achieving academic excellence and securing scholarships. His hobbies include reading classic literature and participating in academic forums.

is an expert in nursing and healthcare, with a strong background in history, law, and literature. Holding advanced degrees in nursing and public health, his analytical approach and comprehensive knowledge help students navigate complex topics. On EssayPro blog, Adam provides insightful articles on everything from historical analysis to the intricacies of healthcare policies. In his downtime, he enjoys historical documentaries and volunteering at local clinics.

Social media's growing impact on our lives

Media psychology researchers are beginning to tease apart the ways in which time spent on social media is, and is not, impacting our day-to-day lives.

Social media use has skyrocketed over the past decade and a half. Whereas only five percent of adults in the United States reported using a social media platform in 2005, that number is now around 70 percent .

Growth in the number of people who use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat and other social media platforms — and the time spent on them—has garnered interest and concern among policymakers, teachers, parents, and clinicians about social media's impacts on our lives and psychological well-being.

While the research is still in its early years — Facebook itself only celebrated its 15 th birthday this year — media psychology researchers are beginning to tease apart the ways in which time spent on these platforms is, and is not, impacting our day-to-day lives.

Social media and relationships

One particularly pernicious concern is whether time spent on social media sites is eating away at face-to-face time, a phenomenon known as social displacement .

Fears about social displacement are longstanding, as old as the telephone and probably older. “This issue of displacement has gone on for more than 100 years,” says Jeffrey Hall, PhD, director of the Relationships and Technology Lab at the University of Kansas. “No matter what the technology is,” says Hall, there is always a “cultural belief that it's replacing face-to-face time with our close friends and family.”

Hall's research interrogates that cultural belief. In one study , participants kept a daily log of time spent doing 19 different activities during weeks when they were and were not asked to abstain from using social media. In the weeks when people abstained from social media, they spent more time browsing the internet, working, cleaning, and doing household chores. However, during these same abstention periods, there was no difference in people's time spent socializing with their strongest social ties.

The upshot? “I tend to believe, given my own work and then reading the work of others, that there's very little evidence that social media directly displaces meaningful interaction with close relational partners,” says Hall. One possible reason for this is because we tend to interact with our close loved ones through several different modalities—such as texts, emails, phone calls, and in-person time.

What about teens?

When it comes to teens, a recent study by Jean Twenge , PhD, professor of psychology at San Diego State University, and colleagues found that, as a cohort, high school seniors heading to college in 2016 spent an “ hour less a day engaging in in-person social interaction” — such as going to parties, movies, or riding in cars together — compared with high school seniors in the late 1980s. As a group, this decline was associated with increased digital media use. However, at the individual level, more social media use was positively associated with more in-person social interaction. The study also found that adolescents who spent the most time on social media and the least time in face-to-face social interactions reported the most loneliness.

While Twenge and colleagues posit that overall face-to-face interactions among teens may be down due to increased time spent on digital media, Hall says there's a possibility that the relationship goes the other way.

Hall cites the work of danah boyd, PhD, principal researcher at Microsoft Research  and the founder of Data & Society . “She [boyd] says that it's not the case that teens are displacing their social face-to-face time through social media. Instead, she argues we got the causality reversed,” says Hall. “We are increasingly restricting teens' ability to spend time with their peers . . . and they're turning to social media to augment it.”

According to Hall, both phenomena could be happening in tandem — restrictive parenting could drive social media use and social media use could reduce the time teens spend together in person — but focusing on the latter places the culpability more on teens while ignoring the societal forces that are also at play.

The evidence is clear about one thing: Social media is popular among teens. A 2018 Common Sense Media report found that 81 percent of teens use social media, and more than a third report using social media sites multiple times an hour. These statistics have risen dramatically over the past six years, likely driven by increased access to mobile devices. Rising along with these stats is a growing interest in the impact that social media is having on teen cognitive development and psychological well-being.

“What we have found, in general, is that social media presents both risks and opportunities for adolescents,” says Kaveri Subrahmanyam, PhD, a developmental psychologist, professor at Cal State LA, and associate director of the Children's Digital Media Center, Los Angeles .

Risks of expanding social networks

Social media benefits teens by expanding their social networks and keeping them in touch with their peers and far-away friends and family. It is also a creativity outlet. In the Common Sense Media report, more than a quarter of teens said that “social media is ‘extremely' or ‘very' important for them for expressing themselves creatively.”

But there are also risks. The Common Sense Media survey found that 13 percent of teens reported being cyberbullied at least once. And social media can be a conduit for accessing inappropriate content like violent images or pornography. Nearly two-thirds of teens who use social media said they “'often' or ‘sometimes' come across racist, sexist, homophobic, or religious-based hate content in social media.”

With all of these benefits and risks, how is social media affecting cognitive development? “What we have found at the Children's Digital Media Center is that a lot of digital communication use and, in particular, social media use seems to be connected to offline developmental concerns,” says Subrahmanyam. “If you look at the adolescent developmental literature, the core issues facing youth are sexuality, identity, and intimacy,” says Subrahmanyam.

Her research suggests that different types of digital communication may involve different developmental issues. For example, she has found that teens frequently talked about sex in chat rooms , whereas their use of blogs and social media appears to be more concerned with self-presentation and identity construction.

In particular, exploring one's identity appears to be a crucial use of visually focused social media sites for adolescents. “Whether it's Facebook, whether it's Instagram, there's a lot of strategic self presentation, and it does seem to be in the service of identity,” says Subrahmanyam. “I think where it gets gray is that we don't know if this is necessarily beneficial or if it harms.”

Remaining questions

“It's important to develop a coherent identity,” she says. “But within the context of social media — when it's not clear that people are necessarily engaging in real self presentation and there's a lot of ideal-self or false-self presentation — is that good?”

There are also more questions than answers when it comes to how social media affects the development of intimate relationships during adolescence. Does having a wide network of contacts — as is common in social media—lead to more superficial interactions and hinder intimacy? Or, perhaps more important, “Is the support that you get online as effective as the support that you get offline?” ponders Subrahmanyam. “We don't know that necessarily.”

Based on her own research comparing text messages and face-to-face interactions, she says: “My hypothesis is that maybe digital interactions may be a little more ephemeral, they're a little more fleeting, and you feel good, but that the feeling is lost quickly versus face-to-face interaction.”

However, she notes that today's teens — being tech natives — may get less hung up on the online/offline dichotomy. “ We tend to think about online and offline as disconnected, but we have to recognize that for youth . . . there's so much more fluidity and connectedness between the real and the physical and the offline and the online,” she says.

In fact, growing up with digital technology may be changing teen brain development in ways we don't yet know — and these changes may, in turn, change how teens relate to technology. “Because the exposure to technology is happening so early, we have to be mindful of the possibility that perhaps there are changes happening at a neural level with early exposure,” says Subrahmanyam. “How youths interact with technology could just be qualitatively different from how we do it.”

In part two of this article , we will look at how social media affects psychological well-being and ways of using social media that are likely to amplify its benefits and decrease its harms.

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Social Media and Its Impacts on Society Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Introductory Essay

Criminal impacts of social media, social impacts of the social media, effects of social media on economies.

Social media is a communication medium, through which people in different geographical locations can interact freely via the Internet. In the contemporary world, communication technology has grown tremendously with the fast development of the high-speed Internet, high quality mobile phones, and computers that enable people to access the Internet from various parts of the world.

In 2010, the Google search engine registered over one trillion different URLs, which is an indication of the tremendous growth of the global Internet community. By December 2013, Facebook had over 1.11 billion users with active accounts and the number has increased ever since.

People carry out different forms of communications ranging from social interactions to business transactions over the social media. Social media has provided all necessary forms of communication including video conferencing for distance learning and corporate meetings. This development has emerged from the fast growth of communication technology, which transverses different economic levels across the world.

The rise of social media has been facilitated by the emergence of the Internet, which came into existence with the development of the first electronic computer in the 1950s. However, the first computers were designed to serve large corporations, governments, and the military.

Remarkable growth of the Internet was achieved in the early 1970s when email was invented coupled with a social network that linked the Duke University and the University of North Carolina in 1979. However, the growth of social media heightened in the early 21 st century with the invention of Facebook, YouTube, Google, and other social media platforms (Boyd & Ellison, 2007).

Social media is very important as it trespasses different economic levels across the world. For instance, through social media, a person based in the United States can interact freely with an individual in Somalia without any form of economic and social hindrance.

In the past, such people would have connected in educational environments, but the situation has changed with the entry of the Internet and social media. In addition, social media is the fastest way of communication as people can chat through messaging or use the video talks while many miles apart. Hence, social media and the Internet are the only ways that global community can be formed.

Social media has influenced the society criminally, socially, and economically. Criminally, social media has led to the growth of Internet criminals. Crimes committed over the social media are of different magnitudes and they mainly include impostors, hacking, and hate speeches.

These forms of crimes have an adverse impact on society as they interfere with the individual’s right for privacy coupled with causing social stigma (Schaar, Valdez, & Ziefle, 2013). Secondly, social media has contributed to the growth of cultural and value degradation across various parts of the world.

Apparently, a fast-growing social community is emerging across the contemporary world due to the development of new unified behaviours across different cultures, thus leading to the degradation of the traditional cultural norms.

Thirdly, social media has led to an unparalleled economic growth across the world. By allowing people to share ideas, the resultant effect is the fast economic growth as some people acquire economic ideas over the social media and implement them in different places.

In addition, the desire to be on social media has created good opportunities for communication technology companies to sell their products in different economies across the world.

Even though social media was developed for noble reasons, it has turned out to be the greatest threat to humanity as far as cybercrimes are concerned. Some people use social media with the intention of earning a living out of criminal activities whereby they determine easy targets through the platform. Criminal gangs such as terrorist groups also use the same media to issue threats or commit an attack.

However, every country has a right to control communication and conduct surveillance on the Internet users with the help of law enforcers. Cyber terrorism is one of the worst attacks that can happen to a nation since it can crash the economy within a very short time. Therefore, it is advisable to regulate the use of social media and conduct surveillance to ensure safety at all times.

It is necessary to investigate crimes through the social media as such move has many advantages over other ways. First, it is easier to get hold of personal information and communication data of a suspect without his or her awareness. The developed countries arrest a suspect only after a crime communication is done beyond reasonable doubts.

Technology has provided law enforcers with systems that track the geographical location of a suspect, thus making an arrest easy. Secondly, it offers a broad level of surveillance as the majority of people are on social media. This aspect allows law enforcers to carry out investigations from a single point, while investigating many suspects at the same time.

Thirdly, it takes lesser time to detect a suspect over the social media as compared to the traditional ways of investigation, which take a long time to accomplish the same task. Hence, social media offers a suitable and efficient way of conducting criminal investigations to the law enforcers.

However, using social media to conduct criminal investigations comes with several demerits (Melander, 2010). For instance, the majority of the people in social media are literate, and thus criminals are capable of heightening their criminal activities beyond the reach of law enforcers.

The most notorious criminal gangs are not feared because they have more sophisticated weapons than the government forces, as they have knowledgeable people who develop systems that create a firewall around them. In addition, social media is dynamic and hence law enforcers will be required to keep on updating themselves on the usage of the media, thus making it hard for them to reach the criminals.

Criminals are capable of using disguised accounts where they communicate through coded messages that are illegible to anyone outside the gang, which makes it hard for the government forces to identify them. Therefore, social media is a complex platform for conducting criminal investigations for the law enforcers.

In conclusion, social media can be used to combat criminal activities, but the individual’s security begins with oneself. It can be a quick way of identifying criminal suspects, but also a hard way of reaching them as it is dynamic and those criminals have their own ways of disguising themselves over the media.

However, the law enforcers cannot sit back and fail to conduct surveillance; on the contrary, they need to keep upgrading their surveillance skills as it helps to prevent cybercrime activities. Hence, social media surveillance has more advantages than disadvantages, and thus governments across the world should uphold it at any cost.

The growth of social media has had great impacts on the social wellbeing of humankind across the world over the last two decades. Given that man is a social being, social media has contributed greatly to the fulfilment of this purpose by bringing together a global community in one communication platform.

Interestingly, in the contemporary world, people are hardly alone provided they have the Internet, mobile phones, or computers within their reach. Social media has allowed people to travel less and communicate more, thus saving a great deal of time spent in the traditional way of doing things.

However, it has brought about both advantages and disadvantages to the social life whereby some people have gained and others lost values due to its influence in their lives. Nevertheless, notwithstanding the foresaid demerits, social media is a great communication tool, which is slowly becoming indispensable in the contemporary world (Knobel & Lankshear, 2008).

By looking at the cause and effects of social media on society in the contemporary world, it becomes clear that this platform is a complex subject to humanity’s social welfare. It is often difficult to realise when social media is good or bad to the users until the repercussions manifest. Hence, the responsibility lies with the users. The users’ ignorance about the downside of social media results in the breakdown of the social fabric.

Many people cannot differentiate what is good from evil, and thus they give in too much to social media. The media freedom that comes with social media hinders governments’ control over the social media, which allows the platform to impact the society tremendously, both negatively and positively.

The perception that social media is good has led to many people nullifying the view that it is harmful if not kept under check. Social media is a community platform and just like in any other community, there should be laws and regulations to keep people’s behaviours under close check.

The advantages of social media brings to society are numerous, but this paper majors on three aspects. First, social media has contributed greatly to the empowering of the societies in many parts across the world. In the contemporary world, news spreads faster across the social networks, as compared to traditional mediums like print media.

Some few decades back, it took a very long time for the world to get major news, which enabled few people to have power over the majority. However, the scenario has changed as the majority can keep the few in power under check over the social media. The majority of the governing individuals are on social media, which deters them from exercising authoritative powers excessively over their citizens.

Secondly, social media has influenced the world society towards the adoption of a near single culture that is congruent to the dynamism of the global technology. Therefore, youths unsurprisingly dress the same in nearly all countries due to the influence of social media, which has led to the development of a common global culture.

Thirdly, the influence of social media has also led to the growth and development of social behaviours as every culture competes with the world’s leading cultures. Colonialists and missionaries were the first shakers of the world traditional cultures followed by economic and technological advancements, but none of them had a major impact on different cultures like the case of social media.

Social media also has had its disadvantages for the society. Some people are suffering due to the effects of social media. First, cultural value degradation is a major crisis that the world is suffering from and it has emerged from the influences of social media. Cultural heritage is the greatest pride that different social groups have enjoyed for many years.

However, the idea of adopting a common global cultural phenomenon has posed risk of loss of cultural heritages to many cultures across the world. Some of the cultural heritages that are passed to every new generation include rituals, dancing, and dressing codes among others, but the current and future generations will hardly adopt that heritage as they have already adopted a new global culture.

Secondly, social media has contributed to social isolations of some groups. The illiterate and economically challenged individuals have been excluded from the new culture to a point of marginalisation. This aspect has led to social dualism, in which those with access to social media ridicule the less fortunate who cannot enjoy the perquisites that come with this form of communication.

This case of marginalisation and ridicule is extreme in the developing nations where the majority of people are not in the social media, thus causing a cultural crisis in the society. Thirdly, social media has contributed to the spreading of immoral behaviours across the world (Ferri, Grifoni, & Guzzo, 2012).

What seems good to a certain society is not always good to another, but the youths are vulnerable to what brings utmost pleasure, which in most cases is immoral.

In conclusion, social media is a good way of communication across different cultures and at the same time bad if not controlled. Notably, it is hard to control the influences of social media to a culture, as the youths are the most vulnerable and active on the platform.

Hence, the entire responsibility lies in the hands of individual users to determine the benefits that come with social media. Unfortunately, those missing from social media feel alienated and marginalised.

However, the advantages of social media outweigh the disadvantages and thus social media has become indispensable in the contemporary world. People should thus embrace social media as it simplifies communication and global interaction.

Global village is a common terminology in the modern day world and it is often used to refer to the fast growing world economy. Social media has greatly contributed to the fast growth of world economies since it has brought together both sellers and buyers in a common platform. Amongst the richest traders in the world, the majority get their customers through the Internet and social media.

Social media allows for trade transactions between parties that are very far from each other and hence contributing to the growth of a global economy. Traditionally, it was harder to do business across and within nations as it took long to reach customers and it demanded huge capital for advertisements.

However, the case is very different today as start-ups are capable of posing major threats to the old businesses due to the influence of the social media. In addition, economic activities are kept in check through social media and economic decision makers are aware of the power of social media, and thus they execute their strategies with extreme carefulness.

The first element in the cause and effects of social media on economies is the availability of many customers on the platform. People are key drivers of the economy as every trader relies on customers for trade. Hence, the availability of many people on social media has created an excellent opportunity for traders to reach out to many people through advertising via the media.

Secondly, social media brings people of different economic, professional, and cultural backgrounds together, which serve as a key determinant of economic growth. Hence, people have the power to question economic decisions, and thus contribute to the making of decisions that favour their economic wellbeing.

For instance, the Obamacare has received great social media attention and people have voiced their concerns via this platform. Thirdly, the world’s most thriving businesses are those in the information technology sector where social media has created huge demands for different products.

There is a great desire for people to get into the social media and others want to communicate effectively using the best available communication devices in the market, and thus mobile telecommunication firms have a huge demand to meet. The huge demand and supply for communication products have played a major role in economic growth across the world.

Advantages of social media effects on economy are numerous. First, social media enables producers to reach out to many customers. Social media has allowed producers to get wide market coverage for their products with less effort, which assures good sales and profits. In so doing, start-up businesses reach their full growth within a short time, thus increasing governments’ revenues.

Traditionally, it was hard for start-ups to reach their full growth due to lack of huge capital investments required for advertisement and product promotions. However, the scenario has changed in the contemporary world as a trader can do advertisement and product promotion over social media without incurring huge costs and logistical challenges.

Secondly, social media has enabled the creation of job opportunities in different economies across the world. It is easier for an individual with an economically viable idea to attract investors on social media and within a short time, the idea comes to reality, thus creating job opportunities.

In addition, the fast growing trend of businesses advertising their products over the social media creates job opportunities, as they demand more labour investments. Thirdly, social media helps traders to identify new markets for their products.

The world economy is nowadays a uniform economy whereby high quality products have potential to sell to other economies with ease. The social media enables a buyer to purchase products available in the world markets. In such a case, ordering products from social media sends a signal to the producers that a new market exists in a certain area.

However, social media has negative effects on economies as explained in this paragraph. First, local products still face competition from imported products. Buying foreign products exposes local products, which in most cases are expensive or inferior, to the risk of extinction.

In the worst case scenario, the government loses revenue, and thus loss of employment and increase dependency on the government by the population. Some governments control this scenario by imposing high taxes on imported goods, but the long-term solution is to improve the quality of local products and charge customers less (Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007).

Secondly, social media has led to globalisation of world cultures, which has enabled some people to emigrate to fast thriving economies. For instance, developing nations have lost talents and productive people to the developed nations as the latter present more promising job offers as compared to the former.

This mass emigration from developing countries has led to loss of capable workforce, thus curtailing the probability of achieving economic goals in third world countries. However, the world economies can take advantage of social media and the world’s new cultural phenomenon to add value to their local mechanisms in a bid to avoid brain drain.

Thirdly, social media has also contributed to reduced productivity of employees as many employers are addicted to it, and thus spend a lot of time communicating with their friends. These behaviours are hard to contain and, in worst-case scenarios, they lead to loss making and unemployment.

In conclusion, social media is good for economic growth, but it has both advantages and disadvantages. However, the sole responsibility of its outcome lies in the hands of the users. It is recommendable to use social media towards achieving economic advantage by nearly all stakeholders in an economy.

Producers can take advantage of social media to identify products that best satisfy the targeted customers in the global phenomenon and capitalise on their strengths to gain a competitive advantage.

Boyd, M., & Ellison, B. (2007). Social network sites: definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13 (1), 4-45.

Ellison, B., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2007). The benefits of Facebook friends: social capital and college student’s use of online social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12 (1), 1143–1168.

Ferri, F., Grifoni, P., & Guzzo, T. (2012). New forms of social and professional digital relationships: the case of Facebook. Social Network Analysis and Mining Journal, 2 (6), 121-137.

Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (2008). Digital Literacy and Participation in Online Social Networking Spaces . New York, NY: Peter Lang

Melander, L. (2010). College students’ perceptions of intimate partner cyber harassment. Cyber Psychology, Behaviour, and Social Networking, 13 (3), 263– 268.

Schaar, K., Valdez, C., & Ziefle, M. (2013). The impact of user diversity on the willingness to disclose personal information in social network services. in human factors in computing and informatics . Berlin, Germany: Springer-Verlang.

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Why social media has changed the world — and how to fix it

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Are you on social media a lot? When is the last time you checked Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram? Last night? Before breakfast? Five minutes ago?

If so, you are not alone — which is the point, of course. Humans are highly social creatures. Our brains have become wired to process social information, and we usually feel better when we are connected. Social media taps into this tendency.

“Human brains have essentially evolved because of sociality more than any other thing,” says Sinan Aral, an MIT professor and expert in information technology and marketing. “When you develop a population-scale technology that delivers social signals to the tune of trillions per day in real-time, the rise of social media isn’t unexpected. It’s like tossing a lit match into a pool of gasoline.”

The numbers make this clear. In 2005, about 7 percent of American adults used social media. But by 2017, 80 percent of American adults used Facebook alone. About 3.5 billion people on the planet, out of 7.7 billion, are active social media participants. Globally, during a typical day, people post 500 million tweets, share over 10 billion pieces of Facebook content, and watch over a billion hours of YouTube video.

As social media platforms have grown, though, the once-prevalent, gauzy utopian vision of online community has disappeared. Along with the benefits of easy connectivity and increased information, social media has also become a vehicle for disinformation and political attacks from beyond sovereign borders.

“Social media disrupts our elections, our economy, and our health,” says Aral, who is the David Austin Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Now Aral has written a book about it. In “The Hype Machine,” published this month by Currency, a Random House imprint, Aral details why social media platforms have become so successful yet so problematic, and suggests ways to improve them.

As Aral notes, the book covers some of the same territory as “The Social Dilemma,” a documentary that is one of the most popular films on Netflix at the moment. But Aral’s book, as he puts it, "starts where ‘The Social Dilemma’ leaves off and goes one step further to ask: What can we do about it?”

“This machine exists in every facet of our lives,” Aral says. “And the question in the book is, what do we do? How do we achieve the promise of this machine and avoid the peril? We’re at a crossroads. What we do next is essential, so I want to equip people, policymakers, and platforms to help us achieve the good outcomes and avoid the bad outcomes.”

When “engagement” equals anger

“The Hype Machine” draws on Aral’s own research about social networks, as well as other findings, from the cognitive sciences, computer science, business, politics, and more. Researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles, for instance, have found that people obtain bigger hits of dopamine — the chemical in our brains highly bound up with motivation and reward — when their social media posts receive more likes.

At the same time, consider a 2018 MIT study by Soroush Vosoughi, an MIT PhD student and now an assistant professor of computer science at Dartmouth College; Deb Roy, MIT professor of media arts and sciences and executive director of the MIT Media Lab; and Aral, who has been studying social networking for 20 years. The three researchers found that on Twitter, from 2006 to 2017, false news stories were 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than true ones. Why? Most likely because false news has greater novelty value compared to the truth, and provokes stronger reactions — especially disgust and surprise.

In this light, the essential tension surrounding social media companies is that their platforms gain audiences and revenue when posts provoke strong emotional responses, often based on dubious content.

“This is a well-designed, well-thought-out machine that has objectives it maximizes,” Aral says. “The business models that run the social-media industrial complex have a lot to do with the outcomes we’re seeing — it’s an attention economy, and businesses want you engaged. How do they get engagement? Well, they give you little dopamine hits, and … get you riled up. That’s why I call it the hype machine. We know strong emotions get us engaged, so [that favors] anger and salacious content.”

From Russia to marketing

“The Hype Machine” explores both the political implications and business dimensions of social media in depth. Certainly social media is fertile terrain for misinformation campaigns. During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Russia spread  false information to at least 126 million people on Facebook and another 20 million people on Insta­gram (which Facebook owns), and was responsible for 10 million tweets. About 44 percent of adult Americans visited a false news source in the final weeks of the campaign.

“I think we need to be a lot more vigilant than we are,” says Aral.

We do not know if Russia’s efforts altered the outcome of the 2016 election, Aral says, though they may have been fairly effective. Curiously, it is not clear if the same is true of most U.S. corporate engagement efforts.

As Aral examines, digital advertising on most big U.S. online platforms is often wildly ineffective, with academic studies showing that the “lift” generated by ad campaigns — the extent to which they affect consumer action — has been overstated by a factor of hundreds, in some cases. Simply counting clicks on ads is not enough. Instead, online engagement tends to be more effective among new consumers, and when it is targeted well; in that sense, there is a parallel between good marketing and guerilla social media campaigns.

“The two questions I get asked the most these days,” Aral says, “are, one, did Russia succeed in intervening in our democracy? And two, how do I measure the ROI [return on investment] from marketing investments? As I was writing this book, I realized the answer to those two questions is the same.”

Ideas for improvement

“The Hype Machine” has received praise from many commentators. Foster Provost, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, says it is a “masterful integration of science, business, law, and policy.” Duncan Watts, a university professor at the University of Pennsylvania, says the book is “essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how we got here and how we can get somewhere better.”

In that vein, “The Hype Machine” has several detailed suggestions for improving social media. Aral favors automated and user-generated labeling of false news, and limiting revenue-collection that is based on false content. He also calls for firms to help scholars better research the issue of election interference.

Aral believes federal privacy measures could be useful, if we learn from the benefits and missteps of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe and a new California law that lets consumers stop some data-sharing and allows people to find out what information companies have stored about them. He does not endorse breaking up Facebook, and suggests instead that the social media economy needs structural reform. He calls for data portability and interoperability, so “consumers would own their identities and could freely switch from one network to another.” Aral believes that without such fundamental changes, new platforms will simply replace the old ones, propelled by the network effects that drive the social-media economy.

“I do not advocate any one silver bullet,” says Aral, who emphasizes that changes in four areas together — money, code, norms, and laws — can alter the trajectory of the social media industry.

But if things continue without change, Aral adds, Facebook and the other social media giants risk substantial civic backlash and user burnout.

“If you get me angry and riled up, I might click more in the short term, but I might also grow really tired and annoyed by how this is making my life miserable, and I might turn you off entirely,” Aral observes. “I mean, that’s why we have a Delete Facebook movement, that’s why we have a Stop Hate for Profit movement. People are pushing back against the short-term vision, and I think we need to embrace this longer-term vision of a healthier communications ecosystem.”

Changing the social media giants can seem like a tall order. Still, Aral says, these firms are not necessarily destined for domination.

“I don’t think this technology or any other technology has some deterministic endpoint,” Aral says. “I want to bring us back to a more practical reality, which is that technology is what we make it, and we are abdicating our responsibility to steer technology toward good and away from bad. That is the path I try to illuminate in this book.”

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Press mentions.

Prof. Sinan Aral’s new book, “The Hype Machine,” has been selected as one of the best books of the year about AI by Wired . Gilad Edelman notes that Aral’s book is “an engagingly written shortcut to expertise on what the likes of Facebook and Twitter are doing to our brains and our society.”

Prof. Sinan Aral speaks with Danny Crichton of TechCrunch about his new book, “The Hype Machine,” which explores the future of social media. Aral notes that he believes a starting point “for solving the social media crisis is creating competition in the social media economy.” 

New York Times

Prof. Sinan Aral speaks with New York Times editorial board member Greg Bensinger about how social media platforms can reduce the spread of misinformation. “Human-in-the-loop moderation is the right solution,” says Aral. “It’s not a simple silver bullet, but it would give accountability where these companies have in the past blamed software.”

Prof. Sinan Aral speaks with Kara Miller of GBH’s Innovation Hub about his research examining the impact of social media on everything from business re-openings during the Covid-19 pandemic to politics.

Prof. Sinan Aral speaks with NPR’s Michael Martin about his new book, “The Hype Machine,” which explores the benefits and downfalls posed by social media. “I've been researching social media for 20 years. I've seen its evolution and also the techno utopianism and dystopianism,” says Aral. “I thought it was appropriate to have a book that asks, 'what can we do to really fix the social media morass we find ourselves in?'”

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Persuasive Essay Writing

Persuasive Essay About Social Media

Learn How to Write a Persuasive Essay About Social Media With Examples

Published on: Jan 26, 2023

Last updated on: Jan 29, 2024

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Share this article

Are you looking to learn how to write a persuasive essay about social media? 

Perfect, you've come to the right place!

From navigating the power of hashtags to analyzing changes in public opinion, these examples will help guide you on your journey. 

Whether you’re a seasoned pro at writing persuasive essays or just a starter, look at these examples to be inspired.

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Brief Overview of Persuasive Essay

A persuasive essay persuades the reader or audience to take a particular stance on an issue. It is used to present an opinion on any subject, and it typically takes the form of an academic essay. It includes evidence and facts supporting its arguments.

The writer must use facts and reliable sources to back up his or her claims.

It is also important that the essay should be well-structured. It should have clear arguments and a logical flow from one point to another.

Learn more about crafting perfect persuasive essays with the help of our detailed guide.

Persuasive Essay Examples About Social Media

Are you a student unsure how to write persuasive essays successfully? Well, never fear! 

We've got examples of some amazing persuasive essays about social media that will surely give you inspiration. Let’s take a look at a short persuasive essay example: 

Check these FREE downloadable samples of persuasive essays! 

Persuasive essay about social media on students

Persuasive essay about social media addiction

Persuasive Essay about Social Media Platforms are Danger to Our Privacy

Persuasive essay about social media beneficial or harmful

Persuasive essay about social media privacy

Persuasive essay on social media is bad for students

Examples of Argumentative Essay about Social Media

To help get your creative juices flowing, look at these example argumentative essays about social media below!

Argumentative essay about social media advantages and disadvantages

Argumentative essay about social media addiction

For more examples of persuasive essays, check out our blog on persuasive essay examples .

How Can You Write a Persuasive Essay About Social Media?      

A persuasive essay about social media can be an interesting and challenging task.

Understanding what makes a persuasive essay unique and how to craft arguments that effectively communicate your point of view is important. 

These are a few steps you should follow before writing an effective persuasive essay on social media.

Step 1: Decide Your Stance

First, you must decide on your stance regarding the issue at hand. Are you for or against the use of social media? Are you in support of social media?

After you decide your stance, move on to the research process.

Step 2: Conduct Due Research

Once you have established your position, you must research the topic and develop an argument that supports your stance. 

Make sure to include facts, statistics, and examples to back up your points.

Step 3: Outline Your Essay

Create a structured persuasive essay outline before delving into detailed writing. This roadmap will help organize your thoughts, ensuring a logical flow of arguments. Outline your introduction, key points, counterarguments, and conclusion.

Step 4: Craft Your Introduction 

The introduction should provide context, state the thesis statement , and grab the reader's attention. It precedes deciding your stance and initiates the overall writing process.

Read this free PDF to learn more about crafting essays on social media!

Persuasive essay about social media introduction

Step 5: Write the Body

Organize your arguments logically in the body of the essay. Each paragraph should focus on a specific point, supported by research and addressing counterarguments. This follows the introduction and precedes maintaining a persuasive tone.

Step 6: Address All Counterarguments

It is important to anticipate potential counterarguments from those who oppose your stance. 

Take time to address these points directly and provide evidence for why your opinion is more valid.

Step 7: Maintain a Persuasive Tone

To maintain your audience's attention, it is important to write in a confident and persuasive tone throughout the essay. 

Use strong language that will make readers take notice of your words. 

Check out this video on persuasive writing tones and styles.

Step 8: Conclude Your Essay

Finally, end your essay with a memorable conclusion that will leave your audience with something to think about. 

With these important steps taken into account, you can create an effective persuasive essay about social media!

Step 9: Revise and Edit

After completing your initial draft, take time to revise and edit your essay. Ensure clarity, coherence, and the effective flow of arguments. This step follows the conclusion of your essay and precedes the final check for overall effectiveness.

Persuasive Essay About Social Media Writing Tips

Here are some additional writing tips to refine your persuasive essay on social media.

• Highlight Numbers: Use facts and numbers to show how important social media is.
• Tell Stories: Share real stories to help people connect with the impact of social media.
• Use Pictures: Add charts or pictures to make your essay more interesting and easy to understand.
• Answer Questions: Think about what people might disagree with and explain why your ideas are better.
• Talk About What's Right: Explain why it's important to use social media in a good and fair way.

Paper Due? Why Suffer? That's our Job!

Social Media Persuasive Essay Topics

Take a look at these creative and enticing persuasive essay topics. Choose from one of them or get inspiration from these topics.

• Should social media platforms be held accountable for cyberbullying?
• Should age restrictions be stricter for social media access to protect younger users from its negative effects?
• Should social media companies be mandated to prioritize user privacy over targeted advertising?
• Should schools integrate mandatory education on the pitfalls of social media for students?
• Should governments regulate the amount of time users spend on social media to prevent addiction?
• Should social media influencers face stricter guidelines for promoting unrealistic body standards?
• Should there be more transparency about how algorithms on social media platforms amplify divisive content?
• Should employers be allowed to consider an applicant's social media profiles during the hiring process?
• Should there be penalties for social networking sites that propagate false information?
• Should there be a limit on the amount of personal data social media platforms can collect from users?

Check out some more interesting persuasive essay topics to get inspiration for your next essay.

Wrapping up, 

Learning how to write persuasive essays about social media matters in today's digital world is crucial whether you are a high school student or a college student. These examples guide us in exploring both the good and bad sides of social media's impact. 

We hope this persuasive blog on social media has given you a few new ideas to consider when persuading your audience.

But if you are struggling with your essay assignment do not hesitate to seek professional help. At CollegeEssay.org , our writing experts can help you get started on any type of essay. 

With our professional persuasive essay writing service , you can be confident that your paper will be written in utmost detail.

So don't wait any longer! Just ask us ' write my essay ' today and let us help you make the most of your writing experience!

Frequently Asked Questions

What are some good persuasive essay topics.

Good persuasive essay topics can include topics related to social media, such as 

• whether or not it should be regulated more heavily,
• the impact of social media on society, 
• how social media has changed our daily lives.

How do you write an introduction for social media essay?

You should start by briefly explaining what the essay will cover and why it is important. 

You should also provide brief background information about the topic and what caused you to choose it for your essay.

What is a good title for a social media essay?

A good title for a social media essay could be "The Impact of Social Media on Society" or "Social Media: Regulation and Responsibility." 

These titles indicate the content that will be discussed in the essay while still being interesting and thought-provoking.

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Social Media Essay: Social Media vs. Real-Life Communication

Can Social Media Destroy Real-Life Communication?

Introduction

As humanity progresses, the way people communicate changes as well, with every year becoming easier and more effective. First, there was post-crossing, then phones were invented, and now, when almost all people have access to the internet, social media is used in order to not only communicate internationally, but also within short distances.

Social Media as a Threat of Real-Life Communication

With growing popularity of platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and other messaging apps, some started to argue that real-life communication is on the edge of extinction. It is especially dangerous for those who are already growing up using social media. On the other hand, people also suggest that online communication is only improving the state in which people live in, and it is just a matter of time when there will be achieved a great balance between real-life and online communication. What is sure to say is that social media has definitely affected face-to-face interaction in a lot of cases, yet it is up for anyone to make their own decision if this influence is negative or positive.

The Impact of Online Communication on Verbal Skills and Emotional Intelligence

One of the arguments against excessive use of texting and online communication is the fact that children will not be able to develop verbal skills and emotional intelligence. Dr. Kate Roberts, a Boston-based school psychologist, is an owner of such an opinion, and she blames technologies on the increasing amount of people who have problems with face-to-face communication, saying that “it is like we have lost the skill of courtship and the ability to make that connection” (Johnson). She is also highly concerned about children’s brains changing because they use an easier method of communication, through online media. Yet, some parents are already taking action by limiting the time that their kids spend online, so this problem might be more about good parenting, than about how destructive Instagram and Facebook are.

The Effect on Real-Life Friendships and Social Circles

Some also argue that social media is harming friendships people have in real life. Some studies speculate that a human brain can only handle a friendship with a limited amount of people, about 150 people to be exact (Chesak), which could resonate negatively with social media’s friend groups having no limits. Due to the excessive amount of friends online to communicate with, people could find themselves having not enough time or energy to spend on real-life friends.

The Influence of Social Media on Language Skills

These are not the only negative consequences of increasing use of social media. People who text tend to use verbal language less, which could decrease language skills and make it harder to build a structurally correct sentence (“The Negative Impacts of Social Media on Face-to-Face Interactions”). What also needs to be addressed is an increasing problem with social media addiction, which might be more harmless than smoking or drinking, yet it still profoundly impairs the quality of life, and makes it harder to not only communicate in real life, but also perform other essential actions like working, driving, or even eating.

Public Opinion on the Use Of Social Media for Communication

Ordinary people tend to have different opinions even when they are not considering scientific studies, though it is evident that the most popular belief is that online communication is, in fact, harming real-life communication. To the question of whether social media destroys real human relationships, eighty percent of the people on Debate.org answered “yes,” and only twenty percent chose “no” (“Does Social Media Destroy Real Human Relationships?”). People are sharing their opinions that using phones makes people ignore what is happening around them, and online interaction cannot replace face-to-face communication.

There are quite a lot of reasons why people think that social media is affecting real-life communication negatively, yet it has not destroyed it. As it is, for now, people use social media as one of the tools to communicate, and the time when social media will entirely replace face-to-face interaction has not come yet, and it probably will never come, if people try hard enough.

Works Cited

Chesak, Jennifer. “How Social Media Is Taking Away from Your Friendships.” Healthline , Healthline Media, 9 Jan. 2018, https://www.healthline.com/health/how-social-media-is-ruining-relationships#2. “Does Social Media Destroy Real Human Relationships?” Debate.org , https://www.debate.org/opinions/does-social-media-destroy-real-human-relationships. Johnson, Chandra. “Face Time vs. Screen Time: The Technological Impact on Communication.” Desert News , Desert News Publishing Company, 29 Aug. 2014, https://www.deseretnews.com/article/865609628/How-technology-is-changing-the-way-we-communicate.html. “The Negative Impacts of Social Media on Face-to-Face Interactions.” Final Inquiry Project , 1 Dec. 2015, https://rampages.us/peasedn200/2015/12/01/final-inquiry-project/.

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We can’t imagine our life without social media. We communicate, share our emotions, order food, and work online. But what about real-life communication? The author of the social media essay suggests that Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and other services can’t destroy face-to-face interaction, but they certainly may hurt our communication.

If you’re interested in similar topics, we highly recommend you to read another social media argumentative essay on how social media connect people or cause isolation. You’re free to use our samples as a source of inspiration or templates for your writing. However, copying without proper citing is forbidden and will be considered plagiarism.

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I believe that a social media consultant must be attuned to the company goals and aspirations if he or she is to represent them on their social media channels. I also think that outsourcing social media marketing is a good idea for a company looking to specialize in their core business. In any case, most businesses outsource marketing and advertising and I don’t see why social media marketing should be any different. You just need to be actively involved to ensure that you are represented in the way that you want

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Essay on Social Media for School Students and Children

500+ words essay on social media.

Social media is a tool that is becoming quite popular these days because of its user-friendly features. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and more are giving people a chance to connect with each other across distances. In other words, the whole world is at our fingertips all thanks to social media. The youth is especially one of the most dominant users of social media. All this makes you wonder that something so powerful and with such a massive reach cannot be all good. Like how there are always two sides to a coin, the same goes for social media. Subsequently, different people have different opinions on this debatable topic. So, in this essay on Social Media, we will see the advantages and disadvantages of social media.

Advantages of Social Media

When we look at the positive aspect of social media, we find numerous advantages. The most important being a great device for education . All the information one requires is just a click away. Students can educate themselves on various topics using social media.

Moreover, live lectures are now possible because of social media. You can attend a lecture happening in America while sitting in India.

Furthermore, as more and more people are distancing themselves from newspapers, they are depending on social media for news. You are always updated on the latest happenings of the world through it. A person becomes more socially aware of the issues of the world.

In addition, it strengthens bonds with your loved ones. Distance is not a barrier anymore because of social media. For instance, you can easily communicate with your friends and relatives overseas.

Most importantly, it also provides a great platform for young budding artists to showcase their talent for free. You can get great opportunities for employment through social media too.

Another advantage definitely benefits companies who wish to promote their brands. Social media has become a hub for advertising and offers you great opportunities for connecting with the customer.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Disadvantages of Social Media

Despite having such unique advantages, social media is considered to be one of the most harmful elements of society. If the use of social media is not monitored, it can lead to grave consequences.

Thus, the sharing on social media especially by children must be monitored at all times. Next up is the addition of social media which is quite common amongst the youth.

This addiction hampers with the academic performance of a student as they waste their time on social media instead of studying. Social media also creates communal rifts. Fake news is spread with the use of it, which poisons the mind of peace-loving citizens.

In short, surely social media has both advantages and disadvantages. But, it all depends on the user at the end. The youth must particularly create a balance between their academic performances, physical activities, and social media. Excess use of anything is harmful and the same thing applies to social media. Therefore, we must strive to live a satisfying life with the right balance.

FAQs on Social Media

Q.1 Is social media beneficial? If yes, then how?

A.1 Social media is quite beneficial. Social Media offers information, news, educational material, a platform for talented youth and brands.

Q.2 What is a disadvantage of Social Media?

A.2 Social media invades your privacy. It makes you addicted and causes health problems. It also results in cyberbullying and scams as well as communal hatred.

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This paper is in the following e-collection/theme issue:

Published on 5.9.2024 in Vol 26 (2024)

Peer Support for Chronic Pain in Online Health Communities: Quantitative Study on the Dynamics of Social Interactions in a Chronic Pain Forum

Authors of this article:

Original Paper

• Aaron Necaise 1 , MSc   ; 
• Mary Jean Amon 2 , PhD  

1 School of Modeling, Simulation, and Training, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, United States

2 Department of Informatics, Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, United States

Corresponding Author:

Aaron Necaise, MSc

School of Modeling, Simulation, and Training

University of Central Florida

Partnership II

3100 Technology Parkway

Orlando, FL, 32816

United States

Phone: 1 321 300 4582

Email: [email protected]

Background: Peer support for chronic pain is increasingly taking place on social media via social networking communities. Several theories on the development and maintenance of chronic pain highlight how rumination, catastrophizing, and negative social interactions can contribute to poor health outcomes. However, little is known regarding the role web-based health discussions play in the development of negative versus positive health attitudes relevant to chronic pain.

Objective: This study aims to investigate how participation in online peer-to-peer support communities influenced pain expressions by examining how the sentiment of user language evolved in response to peer interactions.

Methods: We collected the comment histories of 199 randomly sampled Reddit (Reddit, Inc) users who were active in a popular peer-to-peer chronic pain support community over 10 years. A total of 2 separate natural language processing methods were compared to calculate the sentiment of user comments on the forum (N=73,876). We then modeled the trajectories of users’ language sentiment using mixed-effects growth curve modeling and measured the degree to which users affectively synchronized with their peers using bivariate wavelet analysis.

Results: In comparison to a shuffled baseline, we found evidence that users entrained their language sentiment to match the language of community members they interacted with ( t 198 =4.02; P <.001; Cohen d =0.40). This synchrony was most apparent in low-frequency sentiment changes unfolding over hundreds of interactions as opposed to reactionary changes occurring from comment to comment ( F 2,198 =17.70; P <.001). We also observed a significant trend in sentiment across all users (β=–.02; P =.003), with users increasingly using more negative language as they continued to interact with the community. Notably, there was a significant interaction between affective synchrony and community tenure (β=.02; P =.02), such that greater affective synchrony was associated with negative sentiment trajectories among short-term users and positive sentiment trajectories among long-term users.

Conclusions: Our results are consistent with the social communication model of pain, which describes how social interactions can influence the expression of pain symptoms. The difference in long-term versus short-term affective synchrony observed between community members suggests a process of emotional coregulation and social learning. Participating in health discussions on Reddit appears to be associated with both negative and positive changes in sentiment depending on how individual users interacted with their peers. Thus, in addition to characterizing the sentiment dynamics existing within online chronic pain communities, our work provides insight into the potential benefits and drawbacks of relying on support communities organized on social media platforms.

Introduction

The National Institutes of Health describes chronic pain as pain persisting for >3 to 6 months [ 1 , 2 ], which is substantially longer than a “typical” acute response to injury [ 3 ]. Chronic pain can be attributed to a wide variety of underlying medical conditions [ 3 ], and it is one of the most common health complaints in the United States [ 4 , 5 ]. A recent report from the National Center for Health Statistics found that the prevalence of chronic pain among adults in the United States was approximately 20%, while an additional 7.4% of survey respondents reported pain severe enough to impact daily functioning [ 4 , 5 ]. Moreover, prevalence rates are similarly high in high-income [ 6 - 9 ] and low- and middle-income countries [ 9 , 10 ] throughout the world, contributing to a global public health problem [ 11 , 12 ].

Due to the complexities of pain processing, successful management often necessitates a multifaceted approach personalized to meet the needs of the individual [ 13 ]. Chronic pain is considered to be a complex process, whereby psychosocial factors such as emotions, expectations, and social relationships interact with an individual’s physical health to contribute to the maintenance of symptoms [ 3 , 14 , 15 ]. Thus, it is encouraged to engage in health self-management strategies that contribute to mental and physical well-being [ 16 - 18 ]. One particularly impactful self-management strategy is participation in peer support, which occurs when individuals facing similar health challenges exchange advice, emotional validation, and educational resources [ 19 - 22 ]. Those experiencing chronic pain frequently report emotional distress and feelings of social isolation, and peer support can help alleviate these stressors [ 23 ].

Peer support, and pain self-management [ 23 ] more broadly, is increasingly taking place on social media platforms such as Reddit (Reddit, Inc), Facebook (Meta Platforms, Inc), and Instagram (Meta Platforms, Inc) [ 24 ]. Social media users with chronic health conditions frequently self-organize into large peer-to-peer communities that function as social and informational hubs [ 25 ]. For example, there are many peer-driven support communities on Reddit in which tens of thousands of members share private health information and respond to medical inquiries. Support interactions on social media platforms are unique in that they consist of naturally occurring discussions driven by users themselves, contrasting formally organized support groups [ 26 ] and structured web-based interventions [ 27 ]. Although users tend to have positive experiences with online support [ 28 ], interactions on the internet are not universally positive. As demonstrated by the COVID-19 pandemic, social media platforms have the potential to spread misinformation and hostility toward medical experts [ 29 , 30 ]. Thus, although writing about pain [ 31 ] and having supportive relationships [ 32 ] can benefit mental health, it is unclear how naturally occurring web-based health interactions influence chronic pain [ 24 , 33 , 34 ].

It is reasonable to assume that the impact of online peer support not only depends on the amount of support an individual receives but also on the affective qualities of their social interactions [ 14 , 35 ]. Negative affective thoughts and pain catastrophizing are theorized to contribute to the maintenance of chronic pain (eg, [ 3 , 14 , 36 - 38 ]), and social interactions can drive users to adopt or reject those beliefs [ 14 ]. Furthermore, the manner in which people communicate about their experiences plays an important role in shaping their emotions and expectations for the future [ 31 , 39 ]. It follows that health communities perpetuating overly pessimistic attitudes or hostility toward health care providers can be harmful to well-being, just as those providing emotional validation can be beneficial [ 22 ]. Thus, examining the affective qualities of web-based interactions using sentiment analysis may serve as an entry point to understanding how health is influenced by participation in online health communities (OHCs). Moreover, the analysis of online health discussions can provide broader insight into how social media users experiencing chronic pain communicate about their pain.

Related Work

Psychosocial determinants of chronic pain.

The biopsychosocial model is the prevailing approach to understanding chronic pain [ 14 , 15 , 40 ]. From this perspective, chronic pain results from the dynamic interactions among biological, psychological, and social processes [ 40 , 41 ]. Edwards et al [ 14 ] provided an overview of the most widely researched psychosocial factors associated with chronic pain, centering around negative affect and pain catastrophizing (ie, negative rumination regarding pain symptoms). Negative affective thoughts are associated with an increased risk of developing chronic pain [ 42 - 44 ] and are believed to contribute to a variety of negative health outcomes [ 3 , 14 ]. Several longitudinal studies have reported that psychological distress, pain catastrophizing, and self-efficacy were moderators between pain and disability [ 37 , 38 , 45 ], such that individuals with greater negative affect were more likely to report impairment at follow-up. Overall, there is substantial evidence that expectations and emotions toward pain can impact health outcomes.

Although the factors outlined earlier are primarily psychological, they are also inextricably linked to social interactions. Maintaining strong support systems provides benefits to both physical and mental well-being [ 46 - 49 ], such as being associated with reduced psychological distress [ 50 - 52 ]. Communication with physicians, friends, or family can drive specific health beliefs that are relevant to pain outcomes. For example, individuals who experience higher spousal autonomy support report increased need satisfaction and well-being [ 53 ], while interventions teaching couples how to communicate supportively reduce pain catastrophizing [ 54 , 55 ]. With respect to the specific mechanisms, social interactions can perpetuate realistic treatment expectations, provide supportive (vs adversarial or solicitous [ 14 ]) feedback in response to pain expressions, and encourage health self-management [ 24 ]. Thus, social interactions are potentially facilitative or harmful depending on their qualities.

Building on the biopsychosocial approach to understanding pain, several theories have emerged that present a more explicit account of the social determinants of pain, for example, the study by Craig [ 56 ], the study by Hadjistavropoulos et al [ 57 ], and the study by Sullivan [ 58 ]. The social communication model of pain (SCMP) is an example of conceptualizing the specific biopsychosocial interactions underlying chronic pain [ 56 , 59 ]. The SCMP distinguishes between the effects of intrapersonal (eg, genetic predispositions and family history) and interpersonal (eg, social interactions and medical treatments) processes, emphasizing the contributions of “others” on health. According to this model, a pain-relevant social interaction occurs when a person in pain expresses their symptoms verbally or nonverbally, and an observer decodes and acts on that expression. The action taken by the observer can range from helpful to exacerbating, and it directly influences how the person in pain interprets their pain in the future. Notably, this model emphasizes that an observer’s decoding of a pain expression is biased by their own background, and the subsequent actions they take depend on their relationship to the person in pain (ie, they might be a caregiver, friend, or stranger). This framing helps contextualize online support interactions where communication tends to be anonymous, expressions of pain are text based, and observers have little obligation to respond ethically compared to “real-life” associates [ 60 - 62 ]. The description of social influence provided by the SCMP can also be extended to the context of social media. That is to say that a social media user’s interpretation of their pain may be iteratively updated by the feedback they receive on the web leading to changes in how they perceive and express their pain in the future. Thus, examining online health discussions is an avenue for investigating the social determinants of pain described by the SCMP.

Chronic Pain Support Interactions on Social Media

Social media is a term used to describe a collection of digital technologies that allow users to maintain a web-based presence, communicate and network with others, and share user-generated content [ 63 , 64 ]. The potential utility of social media platforms for health care purposes was recognized long before the rise of modern social networking sites, with initial research often focusing on peer-to-peer support occurring in chat rooms and messaging boards throughout the internet [ 65 - 67 ]. A review published in 2004 by Eysenbach et al [ 68 ] reported a lack of evidence to suggest that these early-forming OHCs had positive impacts on well-being, but the authors acknowledged that they were largely unmoderated and in the infancy of their development. With expanded access to the internet and the introduction of popular social networking sites (ie, Facebook and YouTube [Google LLC]), the growth of OHCs accelerated [ 69 ]. There is now a huge selection of communities available to social media users depending on their individual needs and preferences, varying with the amount of professional input provided [ 70 ], type of communication, and degree of anonymity [ 26 ].

Qualitative research examining pain discourse on social media platforms frequently highlights interactions containing positive emotional messages and information sharing [ 28 , 71 - 73 ]. In an analysis of 44 blogs collected across several websites, commenters overwhelmingly replied to pain blogs with messages of consolation and encouragement [ 73 ]. Furthermore, there was a “virtual online support sequence” underlying these interactions, in which commenters replied to blog posts with personal anecdotes and used their common experiences as an opportunity for emotional validation [ 73 ]. Similarly, a clinical study using semistructured interviews to gather perceptions about the use of social media platforms for pain self-management found that participants appreciated the ability to connect with others, share their personal experiences, and learn directly from their peers [ 28 ]. The perceived benefits of online peer support are not specific to chronic pain, as similar themes of emotional support, connectivity, and experiential knowledge sharing have been identified in online communities organized for a variety of chronic health conditions [ 19 , 25 , 74 - 76 ].

Quantitative studies investigating the effects of online support on chronic pain have been comparatively sparse and, in many cases, focus on the impact of structured intervention programs (eg, [ 77 - 79 ]) as opposed to the interactions occurring naturally among social media users. There is some evidence that the positive psychosocial benefits provided by traditional support groups can also be provided by casual web-based interactions, particularly when it comes to information sharing [ 80 - 82 ]. For example, individuals who were assigned to follow a Twitter (subsequently rebranded as X; X Corp) profile posting information about self-management strategies reported small improvements in pain, emotional distress, and quality of life after 6 months of virtual interactions [ 81 ]. When considering chronic illnesses more broadly, online peer support has been found to reduce feelings of isolation in adolescents [ 83 ], and the mere act of self-disclosing about life stressors (ie, not just chronic health) can reduce emotional distress [ 84 ]. Although peer support on social media platforms can play a beneficial role, these effects likely depend on the specific social dynamics in the community, such as the presence of peer role models to help guide conversations [ 85 ] or the type of messages that are circulated. Web-based health resources will be even more popular among future generations [ 24 ], highlighting the need for continued research on web-based health self-management. Specifically, social media research can lead to an improved understanding of how individuals experiencing chronic pain develop their health-related beliefs.

This study investigated peer support interactions in OHCs by focusing on the sentiment of individual support interactions. Applying sentiment analysis to the comment histories of users in a popular chronic pain forum on Reddit, we measured the degree to which users synchronized the sentiment of their comments to match their peers, and we modeled the trajectories of their sentiment over the course of their community participation. This work addresses 3 questions regarding the use of online peer support for chronic pain: Do users who engage in online peer support synchronize their pain expressions to match the language of other community members? How does a user’s sentiment progress over time in response to online support interactions? And finally, how do specific interaction dynamics, such as affective synchrony with other users, relate to changes in sentiment?

Study Design

We analyzed comments posted to a popular chronic pain support community on Reddit. Reddit is a platform where users can create personalized forums dedicated to discussing specific topics [ 86 ] and within each user-created forum (ie, “subreddit”), users define their own rules regarding content and membership. The subreddit analyzed in this study describes itself as a forum for users to discuss their conditions with their peers and share advice; however, we have opted to withhold the exact name of the community out of concern for user privacy. The community guidelines provided by the moderators discourage direct medical advice and suggest consultation with professionals before participation. However, it is unclear how strictly these guidelines are enforced. In terms of content, discussion threads contain a mixture of advice-seeking, informational resources, and personal anecdotes. A recent paper using latent Dirichlet allocation to analyze chronic pain subreddits on Reddit similar to the one used in this study found that users most frequently mentioned phrases related to lower back pain in their posts in addition to words such as “doctors,” “help,” and “work” [ 87 ], providing evidence that discussions within these communities are highly focused on the topic of chronic pain.

We collected the post histories of 200 randomly selected Reddit users active on the subreddit and calculated the sentiment of their comments using a dictionary-based approach [ 88 ]. Sentiment analysis is a common natural language processing method used to classify and describe the emotional expressiveness of text by analyzing the valence, intensity, and structural features of language [ 89 , 90 ]. Next, we used bivariate wavelet analysis to estimate the degree of sentiment synchrony between users during interactions, which is a technique popularized for its applications on complex systems [ 91 ]. Unlike a standard linear approach (eg, cross-correlation), wavelet analysis is robust against nonstationarity and describes multiple types of synchronies, including matched intensity, comovement, and leader-follower dynamics [ 91 , 92 ]. Moreover, wavelet analysis can effectively separate changes in sentiment that are occurring reactively (eg, comment to comment), from those occurring globally over hundreds of interactions. Finally, we examined whether discourse on the subreddit was associated with negative or positive changes in the health attitudes of users by using growth curve analysis to model trajectories in comment sentiment.

Ethical Considerations

This study was reviewed by the institutional review board at the University of Central Florida (00001430). Observational public data from Reddit were collected, and there were no direct interactions with human participants. Reddit is a social media platform where users typically provide pseudonyms in place of their real names, which are not reported, and we did not collect personally identifiable information. We randomly sampled users who fit our eligibility criteria, meaning a particular profile’s inclusion is not discernable. In addition, we have opted to withhold the name of the subreddit that we collected data from to further obfuscate the identity of its members. Given the large number of comments we collected, it was possible that some of the text contained identifiable information indirectly in the form of self-disclosures. To protect user anonymity, each user in our sample received a randomized identifier in place of their Reddit username, and the text content of their comments was aggregated using the procedures detailed in the sections that follow such that it would not be possible to link the stored data to any individual Reddit user or real-life individual.

Data Sampling

We collected publicly available Reddit data using the Pushshift database [ 93 ] and Reddit’s application programming interface [ 94 ]. On Reddit, the term submission refers to user-created discussion threads posted within each community, while comments refer to the text replies within each discussion thread. To be included in our final sample, users had to be moderately active members of the support subreddit, with at least 100 total comments and submissions after excluding self-deleted posts and those deleted through moderation. This minimum activity threshold was applied to ensure there was an adequate number of data points for wavelet analysis at lower frequencies [ 92 ]. In addition, we excluded users serving as moderators and Reddit profiles posting automatic replies (eg, apparent bot accounts). To identify Reddit profiles meeting this criterion, we downloaded every publicly available comment and submission made to the subreddit in the last 10 years. We then calculated each user’s total number of posts in the community and randomly selected 200 users with more than the minimum required activity. The sample size was determined using an a priori power analysis for a growth curve model with a small effect size, f 2 =0.10, and α=.05, estimated based on similar previous research examining sentiment in online discussion forums [ 95 - 97 ]. Finally, we collected data from the public interactions these users had on Reddit. We define an interaction as the pairing between a user’s personal comment and the post they were replying to when making that comment. For example, an interaction could involve a user posting a top-level comment in response to a discussion thread. An interaction could also involve posting a reply to someone else’s comment inside of a discussion thread. Thus, for each user, we collected the following: (1) the text of all their comments, (2) the corresponding text of posts they interacted with, (3) comment scores (upvotes minus downvotes), and (4) time of posting.

Data Processing

Each user’s comment history was formatted as a time series sorted in chronological order, and each point in those time series represented 1 interaction with the community. Activity occurring outside of the subreddit of interest was excluded from the analysis. In addition, the Reddit application programming interface returns an error message instead of the original text when comments are removed by moderators or users themselves, and these error messages were excluded. A small portion of comments contained single-word phrases, such as a web address or emoji. Sentiment calculations for these items would have been unreliable, and we opted to remove comments containing <3 words. A total of 73,876 of comment interactions were collected from the pain support subreddit. Of those comments, 5670 (7.68%) were excluded based on low word count or missing data. Shortly before analysis, we also discovered 1 user acting as a moderator, and this individual’s data were removed due to their unique role in the community. Thus, our final sample size included 68,206 (92.32%) of the 73,876 peer-to-peer interactions from 199 users and across 29,360 unique discussion threads.

After cleaning the data, we calculated sentiment scores using a lexicon-based approach [ 88 ], such that there were separate scores for both sides of each social interaction. To improve the reliability of these estimates, we compared 2 popular techniques in the psychology and social media literature. The Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) [ 98 ] dictionary is a natural language processing tool used to extract psychological language attributes and has been applied in a variety of digital health and social media contexts (eg, [ 99 - 102 ]). The LIWC dictionary calculates the percentage of text pertaining to specific topics (eg, the percentage of health-related words) and provides summary variables measuring higher-level cognitive processes. For our purposes, we used the LIWC dictionary to calculate sentiment, number of words, and percentage of health-related words in each comment. Sentiment scores from the LIWC dictionary ranged from –100 to 100, with higher scores indicative of more positive language, lower scores indicative of more negative language, and scores around 0 indicative of neutral language [ 98 , 103 ]. For comparison, we also calculated sentiment using the Valence Aware Dictionary for Sentiment Reasoning (VADER) [ 104 ]. Sentiment scores from VADER have been validated against manual human reviewers and were designed for the analysis of brief web-based internet interactions [ 104 ]. Like the LIWC dictionary, compound sentiment scores from VADER ranged from –1 to +1, with higher scores indicative of more positive language, lower scores indicative of more negative language, and scores around 0 indicative of neutral language [ 105 ]. We found both methods were highly consistent (α=.93) and strongly correlated ( r =0.70; P <.001); consequently, we created a compound score by standardizing and averaging the results of both. Generating compound scores through aggregation has been shown to improve reliability [ 106 ], and, in our case, this approach minimized the influence of text passages where the 2 methods diverged. As a result, each user had one-time series representing their personal comment sentiment and one-time series for the sentiment of comments they interacted with when making their personal comments.

Bivariate Wavelet Analysis

Bivariate wavelet analysis was used to quantify the sentiment synchrony between users and their peers. We used the cross-wavelet transform (XWT) and wavelet coherence (WTC) to gain information about matching sentiment intensity and phase-locked (ie, correlated) changes in sentiment. Compared to cross-correlation, wavelet analysis describes changes in sentiment at multiple frequencies (eg, short- vs long-term changes in sentiment). This allowed us to isolate fluctuations in sentiment occurring comment to comment (ie, high-frequency changes) from those occurring over dozens or hundreds of interactions (ie, lower-frequency changes). In other words, this analysis provided insight into short-term reactionary changes in sentiment versus long-term global changes. We briefly discuss XWT and WTC subsequently; however, readers should refer to the work of Torrence and Compo [ 107 ] for a comprehensive guide to wavelet analysis or Issartel et al [ 92 ] for applications on behavioral synchrony. A discussion of the method and theoretical implications in the context of social media is provided by Necaise et al [ 95 ].

Wavelet calculations were completed using the biwavelet package in R (R Foundation for Statistical Computing) [ 108 ] with a Morlet wavelet function ( ω 0 =6). The Morlet wavelet was selected because it provides good resolution compared to other functions [ 107 ]. Furthermore, cross-wavelet calculations can be sensitive to large spikes in the data, so the data were transformed using a cumulative distribution function, so the values represented percentiles. This transformation has been suggested in previous literature [ 91 ]. The XWT was applied using the method outlined by Grinsted et al [ 91 ] and identified points in time (x-axis of Figure 1 ) and frequency (“period” on the y-axis of Figure 1 ) where users had fluctuations in sentiment that were similar in intensity as their conversation partners. Significance is determined in comparison to AR(1) background processes [ 91 , 92 ], and the significant points (circled in black in panel A of Figure 1 ) are referred to as regions of high common power [ 91 ]. The XWT also provided information about the relative phase (RP) relationship between users and their conversation partners within regions of high common power (depicted by the orientation of arrows in Figure 1 ). The RP angle was extracted from the XWT and described how user sentiment changed relative to their peers [ 91 ], providing information about leader-follower dynamics.

In addition to measuring common power with the XWT, we also calculated user coherence with their peers using WTC. The formula for WTC is similar to Pearson correlation except localized in frequency and time [ 91 ]. Therefore, it is helpful to think about coherence as an indicator of correlation or “comovement” between 2 signals. We used a standard smoothing factor of 0.6 for Morlet wavelets in the WTC calculation and tested for significant coherence against simulated data via Monte Carlo methods with 2000 random initializations [ 91 ]. Regions of significant coherence are circled in black in panel B of Figure 1 .

Statistical Approach

Measuring sentiment synchrony.

Several metrics can be extracted from cross-wavelet power plots relevant to describing synchrony [ 92 ] ( Table 1 ). We were interested in global estimates of synchrony and therefore calculated the percentage of each user’s cross-wavelet plot exhibiting significant common power and coherence ( Figure 1 ). Likewise, we calculated the mean circular angle [ 109 ] of the RP relationships in regions with significantly high common power. These calculations excluded points outside of the cone of influence where estimates can be unreliable, as depicted by the lightened regions in Figure 1 . Each of these metrics was used to describe synchrony from a distinct perspective. Social media users with higher common power were more synchronous with their peers in terms of matched intensity, and higher coherence was an indicator of correlation in time-frequency space. RP angle describes how the sentiment of a user changed directionally with respect to the community. An RP angle of 0° would indicate the sentiments of a user and their peers were in-phase (ie, by fluctuating up and down at the same time), while an RP angle of 180° would indicate an antiphase relationship (ie, by alternating opposite of one another).

a XWT: cross-wavelet transform.

b WTC: wavelet coherence.

c RP: relative phase.

Testing for Significant Synchrony Against Shuffled Baseline

To determine whether our estimates of common power and coherence constituted a significant amount of synchrony beyond what could be explained by random variance, we repeated the wavelet estimations described above on a shuffled version of each user’s data. We then used paired 2-tailed t tests to compare common power and coherence from the original data to the shuffled baseline. It should be noted that our calculations for common power and coherence were based on the percentage of significant points across all frequencies in the power spectrum, leading to deflated percentages that may be difficult to interpret. Thus, we provide effect size estimates to better depict the magnitude of differences between shuffled and real data [ 110 ].

To provide evidence of the construct validity of our wavelet-based outcome measures, we also compared common power and coherence to a more traditional synchrony estimate. Pearson correlation coefficients have been used in previous literature as global estimates of synchrony (eg, [ 111 ]), so we calculated a Pearson coefficient for each user by correlating the sentiment of their personal comments to the sentiment of their peers. We then conducted a correlation analysis between Pearson coefficients and the bivariate wavelet metrics in both the real and shuffled data.

Comparing Degree of Synchrony Across Different Frequencies of Change

As described previously, although there is some overlap between cross-correlation and bivariate wavelet analysis in how they describe synchrony, wavelet analysis has the added benefit of decomposing signals into individual frequency components. This allowed us to analyze synchrony at specific frequency bands (ie, slow vs fasting moving sentiment changes). In addition to extracting common power and coherence across each user’s entire cross-wavelet spectrum plot, we also calculated common power and coherence within 3 distinct frequency bands: low (fluctuations in sentiment unfolding between 20 and 32 interactions), medium (fluctuations unfolding between 10-20 interactions), and high (fluctuations unfolding in <10 interactions). We then used repeated measures ANOVA to compare the amount of synchrony present at each of these 3 frequency bands to investigate whether the degree of sentiment synchrony differed depending on the timescale.

Mixed-Effects Growth Curve for Modeling Sentiment Trajectories

Finally, we examined how users’ comment sentiment changed as a function of activity on the subreddit. To examine the trajectories of comment sentiment, we used the LME4 package in R to fit a mixed-effects growth curve model. A moving window transform was applied to improve the interpretability of model coefficients. We divided each user’s data into a series of equally proportioned windows and calculated average comment sentiment within each interaction window such that each user had 100 data points representing 1% of their total activity. In other words, the value at interaction window 1 reflected the average sentiment over the first 1% of a user’s comments, while the value at interaction window 100 reflected the average sentiment over the last 1% of a user’s comments. This approach has been used in similar literature [ 112 ].

For the growth curve analysis, we fit a mixed-effects model with comment sentiment entered as the dependent variable, interaction window as a fixed-effect, and user ID as a random intercept. The common power estimate, average word count, average number of days active on the subreddit, and percentage of health-related words were entered as covariates. We included word count and the percentage of health-related words to control for the potentially confounding effects of abnormally long comments or medical terms on sentiment scores (ie, certain medical terms could be misclassified as negative). Furthermore, common power was included as an estimate of overall sentiment synchrony, and this allowed us to examine individual changes in sentiment independent of sentiment change related to entrainment with peers [ 91 ]. Finally, we included the number of days active in the subreddit to compare users with long versus short tenures in the community.

Descriptive Statistics

Table 2 contains descriptive statistics related to the Reddit activity of users in our sample, the sentiment of their comments, feedback received from their peers, and wavelet synchrony metrics. Frequency distributions for comment sentiment, common power, and coherence can be found in Figure 2 . Although we only analyzed interactions within the support community, it is worth noting users made a substantial number of posts to other subreddits. On average, activity inside of the support group constituted 22.03% (SD 24.01%) of users’ total Reddit activity.

Users Exhibited Significant Synchrony Compared to Shuffled Baseline

We found users had significantly more common power during their real support interactions (mean 0.06, SD 0.02) compared to a shuffled baseline (mean 0.04, SD 0.01; t 198 =4.02; P <.001; Cohen d =0.40). Likewise, there was significantly more sentiment coherence during real interactions (mean 0.08, SD 0.04) as compared to shuffled data (mean 0.05, SD 0.03; t 198 =6.57; P <.001; Cohen d =0.64). These results suggest users synchronized in terms of matching each other’s intensity (common power), and changes in user sentiment corresponded to changes in peer sentiment (coherence).

Comparing these results to a traditional Pearson correlation approach ( Table 3 ), we found significant positive correlations between Pearson correlation coefficients, real-data coherence ( r 197 =0.46; P <.001), and real-data common power ( r 197 =0.18; P <.001). However, there were no relationships between Pearson coefficients and wavelet calculations in the shuffled data ( P =.77 and .50). Taken together, we found evidence that users synchronized their sentiment during support interactions beyond what could be explained by random variance in their data. The results of our correlation analysis also supported the validity of our synchrony analysis.

a Pearson correlation, listwise deletion.

b Not applicable.

User Sentiment Fluctuated In-Phase With Peer Sentiment

Across all users, we found an average circular RP angle of 2.81°, suggesting users were in-phase with the sentiment of their peers during interactions ( Figure 3 ). Thus, the sentiment intensity of users fluctuated in the same direction without a clear leader or follower , and periods of positive posting by a user were mirrored by periods of positive posting by their peers.

Users Had Greater Synchrony in Low- Versus High-Frequency Sentiment Changes

We found that the average common power varied significantly depending on frequency ( F 2,198 =17.70; P <.001). The common power in low-frequency bands (mean 0.08, SD 0.10) was significantly higher than medium- (mean 0.05, SD 0.05; t 199 =3.66; P <.001) or high-frequency bands (mean 0.05, SD 0.01; t 199 =5.05; P <.001). The same was true for coherence ( F 2,198 =3.79; P =.01), as there was significantly more coherence in low (mean 0.10, SD 0.15) compared to high frequencies (mean 0.07, SD 0.03; t 199 =2.36; P =.02). There were no differences in coherence between medium and high frequencies ( P =.13). These findings suggest that synchrony was most evident in long-term sentiment fluctuations occurring over hundreds of interactions as opposed to the more reactionary changes in sentiment occurring from comment to comment. There were no differences in RP angle ( P =.11), indicating the sentiment of users and their peers were in-phase regardless of scale.

Sentiment Trajectories Depended on Activity and Degree of Synchrony

Across all users, sentiment decreased significantly when interacting with the subreddit (β=–.02; P =.003), and this negative trend was observed while controlling for differences in average word count (β=–.10; P <.001) and average health-related language (β=–.20; P <.001; Table 4 ). In addition, there was a significant 3-way interaction between interaction number, synchrony, and the number of days active (β=.02; P =.02), indicating the trajectory of comment sentiment depended on the degree of emotional synchrony and the duration of subreddit participation. Users who were active on the subreddit for a greater number of days exhibited a steeper decline in sentiment compared to those who were active for shorter durations. Thus, sentiment not only decreased as users interacted with their peers but also decreased longitudinally with the total number of days spent seeking online support. However, this compounding effect depended on affective synchrony. Greater affective synchrony was associated with negative changes in sentiment for those who spent less time on the subreddit, but it functioned as a protective factor for those who were active for longer ( Figure 4 ).

a σ 2 =0.88, τ 00 (random intercept variance)=0.07; intraclass correlation coefficient=0.07; N author =199; observations=19,892; marginal R 2 =0.05; conditional R 2 =0.12.

Principal Findings

Sentiment synchrony.

We found evidence that social media users synchronized the emotion of their language during conversations within a pain support community on Reddit. Users not only matched the sentiment intensity of their peers but also exhibited significant phased-locked behavior, showing positively correlated (ie, in-phase) changes in sentiment at several different frequency scales. Synchrony during dyadic interactions is a well-documented phenomenon, as conversation partners tend to mimic each other’s emotions [ 113 ], language style [ 114 , 115 ], and nonverbal patterns of behaviors [ 111 , 116 ]. Wood et al [ 113 ] suggest that affective synchrony assists with information processing, emotional regulation, and social bonding. Under this framework, synchrony by members of the support community may reflect a more general process underlying supportive interactions, whereby participants bond over shared experiences using similarly intense emotional expressions. Synchrony is also associated with positive benefits for conversation partners, including increased feelings of social connectedness [ 117 ] and positive changes in affect after interaction [ 117 , 118 ]. For example, a study on online support seeking reported that greater linguistic synchrony during text-based discussions predicted satisfaction with support and improvements in mood [ 114 ]. We suspect affective synchrony in the chronic pain subreddit was an indicator of supportive (vs adversarial [ 14 ]) interactions and empathetic language [ 113 ]. Peer support aims to connect individuals who have similar medical conditions with the hope that their common experiences promote feelings of acceptance and understanding [ 119 ]. By that basic conceptualization, affective and experiential synchrony can be seen as essential elements of peer support. Although we do not collect data about health status, future research should investigate whether sentiment synchrony is predictive of positive versus negative health outcomes.

Our investigation of synchrony by timescale (ie, low, medium, and high frequencies), using the XWT, revealed that users were most synchronous with their long-term sentiment dynamics. Each data point included a single interaction between a user and one of their peers, such that low-frequency synchrony (unfolding over hundreds of interactions) represented large-scale coordination across hundreds of community members. In other words, our findings reflect a tendency of users to affectively synchronize at the level of the community over long periods as opposed to at the level of individual interactions. This tendency can be interpreted as a type of social learning, showing how repeated community interactions influence emotional expressions over long periods. Social learning occurs when people observe and imitate the behaviors of others [ 120 ], and, in the context of affective synchrony, it involves multiple people coregulating their emotions to align with a larger group [ 113 ]. It is reasonable that online community members would steadily adjust their emotional expressions as they become more familiar with group dynamics.

A concern among medical professionals in recommending web-based resources is that social media users will be negatively influenced by misinformation or the attitudes of peers [ 121 , 122 ]. In addition, a study on user perceptions found that users often experienced negative web-based interactions that damaged their opinions of online support [ 123 ]. By contrast, our results are a promising indicator that users were partaking in supportive and emotionally synchronous interactions. However, synchrony has the potential to be harmful if it proliferates negative health attitudes. Related to this concern, we observed in our descriptive statistics that the sentiment of users’ personal comments was more positive on average than the content they interacted with, suggesting users often interacted with content containing more negative language than their own. Affective synchrony among users highlights the importance of moderation in peer support communities for promoting positive as opposed to “toxic” (eg, [ 124 , 125 ]) interactions. For example, it is common for many of the pain support communities on Reddit to prohibit users from providing explicit medical advice and to encourage users to talk to their providers about their participation in the community. However, it is unclear how strictly these rules were enforced in the subreddit we analyzed or in OHCs more broadly.

Trajectories in User Sentiment

The biopsychosocial model of pain emphasizes how supportive relationships can promote mental well-being [ 14 ], but it is unclear how naturally occurring discussions in OHCs influence attitudes toward health. Our mixed effect growth curve model revealed a significant increase in negative sentiment over time across all users, controlling for differences in health-related language (eg, “pain” and “health”) and word count. To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine sentiment trajectories in online chronic pain communities. Previous research has focused primarily on mental health support, and findings from those studies have been highly variable [ 96 , 97 , 126 ]. For example, Davcheva et al [ 96 ] reported that changes in sentiment on mental health forums depended on underlying conditions, such that seeking support for anxiety and depression was associated with positive changes in sentiment, and obsessive-compulsive disorder was associated with negative changes in sentiment. This study contributes to this literature by demonstrating how aspects of social media use can further enhance online support outcomes. Specifically, affective asynchrony and community tenure predicted negative versus positive sentiment trajectories. Moreover, our findings align with the SCMP, which describes pain expressions as evolving over time in response to pain-relevant social interactions.

Given the purported emotional benefits of peer support [ 14 , 32 ], findings of a negative trend in sentiment across users were somewhat unexpected. Chronic pain is referred to as a “vicious cycle” [ 127 ], with physical and psychological symptoms progressing many years beyond their onset [ 8 , 41 ]. Several studies have indicated long-term declines in affect co-occurring with chronic illness [ 128 - 130 ], and psychological distress and pain are theorized to be reciprocal [ 14 , 38 , 40 , 131 ]. Thus, our results may have reflected the continued frustrations experienced by users during their pain self-management journey as opposed to representing any specific adverse impact of web-based interactions. The fear-avoidance (FA) model describes chronic pain as a negative affective feedback loop between catastrophizing and pain, and this “downward spiral” [ 132 ] of affect propels symptoms forward until the loop can be interrupted [ 133 , 134 ]. The negative sentiment trajectories observed in this study are consistent with the downward spiral of affect described by the FA model, and, aligning with this idea, users who spent the most time on the subreddit exhibited the most pronounced increases in negative sentiment. It is also important to highlight that a portion of users progressed positively in our sample despite the overall negative trend, and these individual differences were related to having lower community synchrony and shorter community tenures. By identifying the factors that contribute to positive sentiment trajectories, it may be possible to develop personalized interventions that target users based on the dynamics of their interactions. According to the FA model of chronic pain, users may benefit from information about pain catastrophizing, mental health, and social support [ 134 ]. This could be provided in the form of a “stickied” thread that remains at the top of the forum or as an automated message sent to members.

Finally, affective synchrony emerged as a significant factor in predicting positive versus negative sentiment outcomes. For long-tenured community members, synchrony appeared to function as a protective factor against increased negativity. This is consistent with research conceptualizing synchrony as a process promoting social connectedness and emotional support [ 113 , 114 ]. In other words, we would expect individuals involved in more supportive interactions to be more emotionally resilient [ 135 , 136 ]. It is less clear as to why synchrony was dually associated with negative sentiment trajectories among short -tenured community members. One possibility is that these members differed in the type of support they were seeking. There was a significant correlation between the number of days active on the subreddit and word count, r 197 =0.18; P <.001, indicating that short-tenured members were involved in less verbose discussions. It is possible these users were seeking a type of support in which affective synchrony was irrelevant, such as by seeking occasional medical information as opposed to the emotional validation achieved by sharing personal narratives (eg, [ 76 ]).

Strengths and Limitations

Our findings make several contributions to the literature. First, our study is unique in quantitatively examining the dynamics of online chronic pain support communities, contrasting the current literature that is primarily qualitative and focused on pain narratives [ 28 , 73 , 80 , 87 , 123 , 137 , 138 ]. Second, the qualities of pain are typically investigated through measures of central tendency (ie, by comparing average pain catastrophizing across groups). However, the biopsychosocial model describes chronic pain as a dynamic (changing over time) and complex (evolving from the interactions of multiple factors) process [ 14 , 139 , 140 ]. Consistent with this framing of chronic pain, we used wavelet analysis to analyze sentiment synchrony, which is an analytic technique better suited to describe complex system interactions and nonstationary behavior [ 92 , 107 ]. Next, previous studies of online pain support groups have often relied on small sample sizes and do not analyze data longitudinally. In comparison, we analyzed the entire comment histories of Reddit users consisting of over a million comments and approximately 70,000 interactions within 1 OHC. Thus, we present a comprehensive view of users’ web-based interactions inside the chronic pain subreddit over nearly a decade. Finally, as opposed to examining the impact of a structured intervention (eg, [ 27 , 85 ]), we examined naturally occurring conversations that are more representative of everyday social interactions. Unlike a structured intervention or professionally managed support group, our analyses considered undirected web-based conversations where participants likely encountered a wide variety of positive and negative actors. Participants were free to express their emotions with little inhibition related to research participation, especially due to the relatively anonymous nature of Reddit [ 33 ]. This type of longitudinal and naturalistic look into an individual’s pain expressions would be exceedingly difficult to collect in traditional settings [ 33 ].

Despite the strengths of our quantitative approach, there are several limitations. Notably, our investigations lacked data about user health outcomes. We investigated text sentiment as a correlate to chronic pain attitudes and emotions, and our results provided novel insights regarding how sentiment progressed in 1 OHC. However, without data on health outcomes, we cannot know if these trends were indicative of declines in physical or psychological well-being. Users could have viewed the forum as an opportunity for emotional catharsis, venting about their pain increasingly over time. There are some circumstances where negative emotional expression can lead to positive outcomes [ 141 - 143 ], particularly if those expressions are positively reframed by the audience [ 144 ]. In contrast, emotional catharsis can be counterproductive and lead to agitation [ 145 , 146 ]. Thus, it is necessary to exercise caution when drawing conclusions about the merits of support seeking on social media platforms based on the findings of this study.

Another potential limitation relates to our selection of Reddit as a data source. Reddit blends features from popular social networking sites (eg, the ability to personalize a user profile, add friends, or form groups) with the formatting of a web-based discussion board. As a result, the interactions on Reddit tend to surround topical discussions as opposed to resharing or reposting user-generated content. This format facilitates verbose and focused conversations, and it allows us to collect rich longitudinal data about pain-related social interactions. Reddit also affords users increased anonymity compared to social networking sites such as Facebook, as a user’s Reddit profile is not tied to their identity, friends, or family. There is evidence to suggest that social media users seeking chronic pain support prefer the ability to remain anonymous [ 28 ], thus, we suspected users would more candidly share their feelings on Reddit compared to a public-facing social networking site. However, given the unique features of Reddit, it is not clear how our findings generalize to more popular social media platforms that promote different styles of communication. It is also not clear if our findings concerning chronic pain support can be applied to OHCs for other types of chronic health conditions.

Conclusions

Although social media provides easy access to massive peer support networks, it also has the potential to spread negative attitudes and beliefs about pain. We found evidence that social media users synchronized the emotional intensity of their language during virtual conversations about chronic pain, which can be viewed as an indicator of social bonding [ 113 ] and highlights the influence of OHC interactions on pain expressions. Furthermore, affective synchrony functioned as a protective factor against continued negative language use among those with the most negative expressions of pain in the online community. Despite these promising findings, we noted a steady increase in negative sentiment averaged across users as they continued their community participation. This negative trend is consistent with the “downward spiral” of affect described by the FA model of pain [ 132 ], suggesting that the impact of OHCs on pain expressions varies to a large degree dependent on specific user behaviors. Our results highlight the importance of considering specific user and community dynamics when assessing the impact of OHCs. Furthermore, our synchrony indices show there is a high degree of peer influence on pain attitudes and expressions, consistent with the SCMP.

Data Availability

The data generated during and analyzed during this study are not publicly available due to the developer data terms provided by Reddit, which prevents us from distributing or resharing data collected using the Reddit application programming interface.

Authors' Contributions

AN was responsible for project design, carrying out the investigation, data analysis, and writing the manuscript. MJA served a supervisory role, contributing to conceptualization and methodology, in addition to writing, reviewing, and editing the manuscript.

Conflicts of Interest

None declared.

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Abbreviations

Edited by T de Azevedo Cardoso; submitted 24.01.23; peer-reviewed by M Merolli, S Stones; comments to author 10.03.24; revised version received 20.05.24; accepted 24.06.24; published 05.09.24.

©Aaron Necaise, Mary Jean Amon. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (https://www.jmir.org), 05.09.2024.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (ISSN 1438-8871), is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://www.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.

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• I Have Improved My Mental Health
• My Self-Esteem Has Increased
• I Have Cut Down on Screen Time
• I Am More Productive Now
• I Have Reduced Impulsive Spending
• I Focus on New Hobbies and Skills Building
• My Privacy Remains Protected
• I Am Less Concerned About Identity Theft

While social media platforms make it easy to stay connected with friends, they also bring a range of downsides. It can affect your mental health, reduce productivity, encourage impulsive spending, and more. I'll share some of the reasons why I took a step back from social media and how doing so has improved my life.

1 I Have Improved My Mental Health

I've noticed a significant improvement in my mental health since quitting social media. I used to constantly dwell on bad arguments and mindlessly scroll through my feed for hours, all of which took a toll on my mental well-being. I also used to compare my life to others and stress over things beyond my control.

Since leaving social media, I've freed myself from the pressure of keeping up with others. The constant cycle of comparison has ended, and my mind now has the space to relax. I feel much less stressed, which clearly shows my mental health has improved. If you want to reclaim your mental well-being, I highly recommend taking a break from social media.

2 My Self-Esteem Has Increased

On social media, everyone showcases their best side, which used to give me the illusion that all my friends and the celebrities I followed had perfect lives. Seeing filtered images, glamorous lifestyles, and constant success made me compare myself to them. This led to self-doubt and a sense of inadequacy, even though I was working hard to improve my life.

It took me some time to realize that people only present a polished version of themselves online, and behind the scenes, no one’s life is truly perfect. Since quitting social media, I’ve redirected my focus toward my personal goals. I feel more confident, have improved my self-esteem, and appreciate my journey. I strive to be better than I was the day before.

3 I Have Cut Down on Screen Time

To manage IBS , one of my doctor’s recommendations was to reduce my screen time. However, the addictive nature of social media made this difficult. Every day, social media apps used to dominate my screen time. I also started to experience eye strain and neck pain from poor posture. My habit of scrolling before bed also disrupted my sleep cycle.

Quitting social media has drastically reduced my screen time. Now, I have more time to spend with loved ones and am more present in the moment. My friends no longer complain about me being glued to my phone when we’re together. Instead of scrolling before bed, I now read a book that helps my melatonin levels regulate, helping me enjoy a restful night’s sleep.

4 I Am More Productive Now

Social media used to be a big distraction in my life. What often began as a quick notification check used to spiral into hours of mindless scrolling, causing me to lose track of time and waste large portions of my day. Even after leaving social media, my mind used to fixate on waiting for replies on the posts I had commented on.

This habit negatively affected my freelance work. Tasks that should have taken just a few hours used to consume my entire day.

Quitting social media eliminated this distraction . Now, I’ve redirected my energy toward my work, with my full mental focus dedicated to it. Without constant notification pings, I can concentrate much better and complete tasks on time. If you’re also struggling with productivity, cutting off social media could make a noticeable difference.

5 I Have Reduced Impulsive Spending

Have you ever mentioned a product to a friend or family only to see an advertisement for it on social media? The constant temptation from these personalized ads used to lead me to make impulsive purchases that I later regretted. Influencers promoting trendy products also used to push me to buy things I didn’t really need.

The ease of online shopping made it even worse—a few clicks, and the item was on its way. This habit was straining my budget. Since quitting social media, I’ve significantly cut back on my monthly spending. Now, I only make intentional purchases and buy things I genuinely need rather than what catches my eye.

6 I Focus on New Hobbies and Skills Building

Social media used to consume so much of my time that I struggled to complete essential tasks. Since quitting, I now have plenty of time , even after finishing the daily to-do lists I have in mind. The hours I once spent mindlessly scrolling are now devoted to my hobbies. It has given me the fulfillment I had been missing from passively consuming content.

With this social media detox, I now have the mental space to learn new skills to help me grow in my career. I now feel like I'm living a more balanced and fulfilling life.

7 My Privacy Remains Protected

Social media algorithms track our activities and gather vast amounts of personal data. Most of us accept the terms and conditions without fully understanding what type of data these platforms collect. They use this information to display targeted ads or even sell it to third parties—something we can't be sure about. This used to be a constant concern for me.

Since limiting my online presence , I no longer have to worry about my data being collected. Because of this, I'm now less vulnerable to data breaches and other cybersecurity threats. Also, by not sharing my trips, relationships, and other personal activities, I keep my private life away from public view, even from friends.

8 I Am Less Concerned About Identity Theft

I’ve experienced identity theft a few times where scammers copied my profile data and impersonated me to deceive my contacts. They asked for financial help under my name, and some friends even fell for their schemes. This was an ongoing struggle, as scammers used to create new profiles whenever I reported and had their previous ones blocked.

Before quitting social media, I informed all my friends about my departure so they would recognize any new profile, messaging them as a potential impersonator.

I left social media for the reasons outlined above, and it has positively transformed my life. If social media platforms also consume your time and affect your life, you should seriously consider whether it's time to disconnect. If you find my reasons convincing, taking a break from social media apps or limiting their use could positively change your daily life.

• Social Media
• Apps & Web Apps

Social media is dead

Group chats and messaging apps killed it

Tati Bruening, a 22-year-old content creator and photographer, just wants to share memes and post about cooking green beans. Every time she logs onto Instagram, however, her feed is swamped by a combination of perfectly curated photos and professionally created content.

"It's really bizarre to me that everyone's gone to this place in their mind that content has to be so curated," Bruening told us. "So curated that you can't show what you're cooking for dinner, because that's not cool enough." 

Frustrated with the state of the platform, Bruening launched the "Make Instagram Instagram Again'' crusade in 2022. Using her handle, Illumitati, the campaign pushed back against the platform's changes that prioritized algorithmically suggested videos over a chronological feed of accounts you follow. Thousands of users, and even some celebrities like Kylie Jenner , got on board. Soon enough, Instagram scaled back its aggressive recommendations push. 

At the core of Bruening's frustration was a sea change that had swept across Instagram : Instead of everyday photos from regular people, the platform had become a curated platform where even seemingly authentic content was meticulously planned. 

The fatigue average people feel when it comes to posting on Instagram has pushed more users toward private posting and closed groups. Features like Close Friends (a private list of people who have access to your content) and the rise of group chats give people a safer place to share memes, gossip with friends, and even meet new people. It's less pressure — they won't mind if I didn't blur out the pimple on my forehead — but this side of Instagram hardly fulfills the original free-flowing  promise of social media.

"There's this very weird, unspoken social standard of what's allowed on Instagram," Bruening said. "I know that for my age group, it's like you give up on it entirely, and then you just post only to your Close Friends or alternate accounts. There's this sublayer of Instagram that's much more true to what the app once was, but it is just not viewable to the general public."

Bruening isn't alone. Despite the efforts of big incumbents and buzzy new apps, the old ways of posting are gone, and people don't want to go back. Even Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, admitted that users have moved on to direct messages, closed communities, and group chats. Regularly posting content is now largely confined to content creators and influencers, while non-creators are moving toward sharing bits of their lives behind private accounts.

As more people have been confronted with the consequences of constant sharing , social media has become less social and more media — a constellation of entertainment platforms where users consume content but rarely, if ever, create their own. Influencers, marketers, average users, and even social-media executives agree: Social media, as we once knew it, is dead.

Social media to social media

No app better defines the changing nature of social media than Instagram. The app started as a digital scrapbook — a place to keep up with real-world connections, close friends, and family. While other networks had more users (Facebook) or generated more news (Twitter), Instagram seemed to define the ideal form of this era of social media. Instagram became a verb, an aesthetic, and a generational signifier.

"You sort of end up in this world that is beautiful and you are following your friends and following your family," Jeffrey Gerson, a former Instagram product-marketing manager, told us about the early days of the app. "How often do you get the chance to see the world through your second cousin's eyes?"

But as Instagram grew up, things began to change. Sarah Frier, a Bloomberg tech reporter and editor and the author of "No Filter," which chronicles the history of Instagram, wrote that users learned curation from the introduction of photo filters. After filters and editing tools came hashtags, an explore tab, and the option to privately save people's photos. What was once an enjoyable pastime became a minefield of considerations: What should I say in the caption? Are emojis still cool? Is it better to just stay mysterious and let the images speak for themselves? This running list of questions made the posting process overwhelming, robbing Instagram of its early magic.

There's this very weird, unspoken social standard of what's allowed on Instagram.

As posting became higher stakes, new features also pushed users away from the original mission: Instagram began prioritizing video , then livestreaming, and then shopping. Each change muddled the purpose of Instagram even further. Everyday people were still posting to the platform, but more and more of the content became professionalized. Bloggers brought their audience, editing skills, and expensive cameras to the platform. Influencers started to snag brand deals , and fashion bloggers made the platform into a career. Instagram encouraged the rise of influencers with programs that helped creators understand best practices, gave them technical support, and set up discreet payment programs.

Related stories

Today, the app has become an aspirational entertainment app — a place where users can shop , find information, and get inspired (or, more commonly, overwhelmed) by snapshots of the best moments of a person's life. Nearly every photo on Instagram now is hand selected from an album of dozens of nearly identical images. The only difference is the one you're seeing isn't too perfect but just perfect enough for sharing. These shifts had a downstream effect on everyday users: The cadence of posting content changed. "Your friends don't post that much to feed," Mosseri admitted during a recent interview on the "20VC" podcast. 

Hannah Stowe, a 23-year-old who lives in New York, said that while she uses Instagram every day, she rarely finds herself posting these days. "I used to post on Instagram weekly/bimonthly, but now it's much less frequent, like four or five times a year," she told us in a DM. "I add stories more impulsively but way less than I used to. Now it's probably like once a week. If that."

While sharing has tailed off, consuming content hasn't slowed , especially since the start of the pandemic, Andrea Casanova, an influencer strategist, told us. When people were confined to their homes, the apps saw an influx of photos "from people who either have a specific lifestyle or had specific talents," she said. This, in turn, reinforces typical people's decision to not post on their own feeds, Casanova said, because they assume the bar for what people want to see is higher.

"Culture in general has kept a lot of people from showing up because they don't think their life is aesthetic, or they don't think that they're selling anything, so why would they post on social media? 'I just don't have the lifestyle that all of these creators have, so I don't know what I would be sharing' and therefore fall into this loop of never sharing anything," Casanova said.

As users post less and less to Instagram, new apps have tried to stake their claim as the next big thing. The French social-media app BeReal, which gained popularity for its more authentic experience, peaked at 75 million downloads per analytics firm Sensor Tower and a $630 million valuation. Growth has stalled a year later, with a monthly active user base of 51 million, a sliver of Instagram's 1.4 billion. Other apps like Dispo, Poparazzi, and Locket have all used various gimmicks to try and recapture social media's halcyon days — each had a moment in the sun at the top of the US Apple app-store charts — but none have truly broken through. Even ByteDance, which has the same parent company as TikTok, failed to recapture the fading magic with the photo-sharing platform Lemon8.

I'm honestly just tired of social media. I'm tired of consuming content all the time.

And now there is Threads, Instagram's latest play in the space to fill the void that was left as Twitter has undergone so much volatility. While Mosseri has hailed the text-focused platform as a "less angry place for conversations, " Threads' daily active-user count is down 79% a month after it launched — to 10.3 million daily active users, data from Similarweb found. Even with the backing of Meta, Threads may not have the juice to make it through, because it doesn't offer users a new way to interact. It follows in the footsteps of other buzzy startups that rise to the top for weeks, even days, before users get bored. The core issue is that these apps don't solve anything new. They are mostly copycat versions of each other. 

"People are looking for that 'groundbreaking app,' and we still haven't gotten that yet," Casanova said.

It's going down in the DMs

In an era where a lot of frequent social-media users are sick of being " perceived " and having hundreds, or even thousands, of eyes on them, many are retreating to the days of tighter connections and communities. 

"I'm honestly just tired of social media," said 23-year-old Walid Mohammed, who works in the creator economy. "I'm tired of consuming content all the time." 

And if Instagram was the bellwether for the rise and fall of the "social" social-media era, it is also a harbinger of this new era. "If you look at how teens spend their time on Instagram, they spend more time in DMs than they do in stories, and they spend more time in stories than they do in feed," Mosseri said during the "20VC" interview. Given this changing behavior, Mosseri said the platform has shifted its resources to messaging tools. "Actually, at one point a couple years ago, I think I put the entire stories team on messaging," he said. 

These closed spaces aren't just more private than the Instagrams and TikToks of social media, however — they also offer something algorithms can't serve: niche communities .

"You have this really interesting countermovement backwards into these much smaller and much more hyper-specific communities," said Gerson, who recently has helped grow Castro Labs, a queer social-media startup.

That opens the door for new apps that can capitalize on the more direct sharing preferences of the younger generation. Discord, for instance, has grown to nearly 170 million monthly average users — it could even be on a path to an IPO. Other, smaller apps such as Geneva have also provided new ways to connect with people locally or with similar interests. For instance, the content creator Nina Haines launched a group called SapphLit, a self-described "sapphic book club born out of the queer BookTok community."

Victoria Johnston, a 22-year-old software engineer, imagines the ideal social-media platform as a "safe space where people can just connect and you don't feel pressured to have a big following or a presence or be really well known." Johnston, like many others, wants to go beyond a screen. She wants a social network that helps her find community in her everyday life.

"On a space like Geneva or any kind of group networking or chatting app, you're just trying to connect with people with like-minded backgrounds and you're not trying to prove anything to anyone," Johnston said. "You're really just finding those niche communities that you probably wouldn't be able to find on a major social-media app."

And as more users and creator communities migrate toward closed spaces, the behemoths like Instagram are also trying to capitalize on this reality by introducing features like paid-subscription services that offer exclusive group chats. 

You have this really interesting countermovement backwards into these much smaller and much more hyper-specific communities.

Lia Haberman, an instructor at UCLA Extension and an advisor for the American Influencer Council, said that Gen Alpha, the age cohort of 13 and younger, are "not embracing traditional social-media platforms and customs." This presents a problem for influencers and brands, since smaller, more direct spaces are harder to penetrate.

"How does a brand show up in somebody's DMs or Discord server if they're not invited?" Haberman said. But in many ways, that's the point. People can still go on Instagram to check on their favorite celebrities and influencers, but young people don't want brands and marketers infiltrating the closed communities where they spend most of their time.

Social media promised to create an intricate web that brought us all closer to one another, but the wave of exposure led to an openness that many people just aren't interested in. Most people wouldn't let the first person they stop on the street sift through their camera roll. They want their achievements, failures, and little life moments to be kept sacred. So after a decade of airing our most intimate moments in public, the pendulum is shifting back. People are more selective with their communities and are reverting back to an old-school way of interacting. It's hard to know how the change will affect the online atmosphere over the long term — some evidence suggests the shift will create a healthier digital experience , but it also risks further dividing people into like-minded echo chambers.

Whatever the result, it's clear that the Instagram era of social media is over and the new era of "authentic" online sharing is emerging — just without an audience.

Amanda Perelli is a senior creator economy reporter covering social media influencers, advertising and marketing trends for Insider. Sydney Bradley is a senior reporter covering the creator economy, influencers, and tech for Insider. 

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• Published: 31 August 2024

Knowledge mapping and evolution of research on older adults’ technology acceptance: a bibliometric study from 2013 to 2023

• Xianru Shang   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0000-8906-3216 1 ,
• Zijian Liu 1 ,
• Chen Gong 1 ,
• Zhigang Hu 1 ,
• Yuexuan Wu 1 &
• Chengliang Wang   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2208-3508 2  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  11 , Article number:  1115 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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• Science, technology and society

The rapid expansion of information technology and the intensification of population aging are two prominent features of contemporary societal development. Investigating older adults’ acceptance and use of technology is key to facilitating their integration into an information-driven society. Given this context, the technology acceptance of older adults has emerged as a prioritized research topic, attracting widespread attention in the academic community. However, existing research remains fragmented and lacks a systematic framework. To address this gap, we employed bibliometric methods, utilizing the Web of Science Core Collection to conduct a comprehensive review of literature on older adults’ technology acceptance from 2013 to 2023. Utilizing VOSviewer and CiteSpace for data assessment and visualization, we created knowledge mappings of research on older adults’ technology acceptance. Our study employed multidimensional methods such as co-occurrence analysis, clustering, and burst analysis to: (1) reveal research dynamics, key journals, and domains in this field; (2) identify leading countries, their collaborative networks, and core research institutions and authors; (3) recognize the foundational knowledge system centered on theoretical model deepening, emerging technology applications, and research methods and evaluation, uncovering seminal literature and observing a shift from early theoretical and influential factor analyses to empirical studies focusing on individual factors and emerging technologies; (4) moreover, current research hotspots are primarily in the areas of factors influencing technology adoption, human-robot interaction experiences, mobile health management, and aging-in-place technology, highlighting the evolutionary context and quality distribution of research themes. Finally, we recommend that future research should deeply explore improvements in theoretical models, long-term usage, and user experience evaluation. Overall, this study presents a clear framework of existing research in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance, providing an important reference for future theoretical exploration and innovative applications.

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Introduction.

In contemporary society, the rapid development of information technology has been intricately intertwined with the intensifying trend of population aging. According to the latest United Nations forecast, by 2050, the global population aged 65 and above is expected to reach 1.6 billion, representing about 16% of the total global population (UN 2023 ). Given the significant challenges of global aging, there is increasing evidence that emerging technologies have significant potential to maintain health and independence for older adults in their home and healthcare environments (Barnard et al. 2013 ; Soar 2010 ; Vancea and Solé-Casals 2016 ). This includes, but is not limited to, enhancing residential safety with smart home technologies (Touqeer et al. 2021 ; Wang et al. 2022 ), improving living independence through wearable technologies (Perez et al. 2023 ), and increasing medical accessibility via telehealth services (Kruse et al. 2020 ). Technological innovations are redefining the lifestyles of older adults, encouraging a shift from passive to active participation (González et al. 2012 ; Mostaghel 2016 ). Nevertheless, the effective application and dissemination of technology still depends on user acceptance and usage intentions (Naseri et al. 2023 ; Wang et al. 2023a ; Xia et al. 2024 ; Yu et al. 2023 ). Particularly, older adults face numerous challenges in accepting and using new technologies. These challenges include not only physical and cognitive limitations but also a lack of technological experience, along with the influences of social and economic factors (Valk et al. 2018 ; Wilson et al. 2021 ).

User acceptance of technology is a significant focus within information systems (IS) research (Dai et al. 2024 ), with several models developed to explain and predict user behavior towards technology usage, including the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Davis 1989 ), TAM2, TAM3, and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) (Venkatesh et al. 2003 ). Older adults, as a group with unique needs, exhibit different behavioral patterns during technology acceptance than other user groups, and these uniquenesses include changes in cognitive abilities, as well as motivations, attitudes, and perceptions of the use of new technologies (Chen and Chan 2011 ). The continual expansion of technology introduces considerable challenges for older adults, rendering the understanding of their technology acceptance a research priority. Thus, conducting in-depth research into older adults’ acceptance of technology is critically important for enhancing their integration into the information society and improving their quality of life through technological advancements.

Reviewing relevant literature to identify research gaps helps further solidify the theoretical foundation of the research topic. However, many existing literature reviews primarily focus on the factors influencing older adults’ acceptance or intentions to use technology. For instance, Ma et al. ( 2021 ) conducted a comprehensive analysis of the determinants of older adults’ behavioral intentions to use technology; Liu et al. ( 2022 ) categorized key variables in studies of older adults’ technology acceptance, noting a shift in focus towards social and emotional factors; Yap et al. ( 2022 ) identified seven categories of antecedents affecting older adults’ use of technology from an analysis of 26 articles, including technological, psychological, social, personal, cost, behavioral, and environmental factors; Schroeder et al. ( 2023 ) extracted 119 influencing factors from 59 articles and further categorized these into six themes covering demographics, health status, and emotional awareness. Additionally, some studies focus on the application of specific technologies, such as Ferguson et al. ( 2021 ), who explored barriers and facilitators to older adults using wearable devices for heart monitoring, and He et al. ( 2022 ) and Baer et al. ( 2022 ), who each conducted in-depth investigations into the acceptance of social assistive robots and mobile nutrition and fitness apps, respectively. In summary, current literature reviews on older adults’ technology acceptance exhibit certain limitations. Due to the interdisciplinary nature and complex knowledge structure of this field, traditional literature reviews often rely on qualitative analysis, based on literature analysis and periodic summaries, which lack sufficient objectivity and comprehensiveness. Additionally, systematic research is relatively limited, lacking a macroscopic description of the research trajectory from a holistic perspective. Over the past decade, research on older adults’ technology acceptance has experienced rapid growth, with a significant increase in literature, necessitating the adoption of new methods to review and examine the developmental trends in this field (Chen 2006 ; Van Eck and Waltman 2010 ). Bibliometric analysis, as an effective quantitative research method, analyzes published literature through visualization, offering a viable approach to extracting patterns and insights from a large volume of papers, and has been widely applied in numerous scientific research fields (Achuthan et al. 2023 ; Liu and Duffy 2023 ). Therefore, this study will employ bibliometric methods to systematically analyze research articles related to older adults’ technology acceptance published in the Web of Science Core Collection from 2013 to 2023, aiming to understand the core issues and evolutionary trends in the field, and to provide valuable references for future related research. Specifically, this study aims to explore and answer the following questions:

RQ1: What are the research dynamics in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance over the past decade? What are the main academic journals and fields that publish studies related to older adults’ technology acceptance?

RQ2: How is the productivity in older adults’ technology acceptance research distributed among countries, institutions, and authors?

RQ3: What are the knowledge base and seminal literature in older adults’ technology acceptance research? How has the research theme progressed?

RQ4: What are the current hot topics and their evolutionary trajectories in older adults’ technology acceptance research? How is the quality of research distributed?

Methodology and materials

Research method.

In recent years, bibliometrics has become one of the crucial methods for analyzing literature reviews and is widely used in disciplinary and industrial intelligence analysis (Jing et al. 2023 ; Lin and Yu 2024a ; Wang et al. 2024a ; Xu et al. 2021 ). Bibliometric software facilitates the visualization analysis of extensive literature data, intuitively displaying the network relationships and evolutionary processes between knowledge units, and revealing the underlying knowledge structure and potential information (Chen et al. 2024 ; López-Robles et al. 2018 ; Wang et al. 2024c ). This method provides new insights into the current status and trends of specific research areas, along with quantitative evidence, thereby enhancing the objectivity and scientific validity of the research conclusions (Chen et al. 2023 ; Geng et al. 2024 ). VOSviewer and CiteSpace are two widely used bibliometric software tools in academia (Pan et al. 2018 ), recognized for their robust functionalities based on the JAVA platform. Although each has its unique features, combining these two software tools effectively constructs mapping relationships between literature knowledge units and clearly displays the macrostructure of the knowledge domains. Particularly, VOSviewer, with its excellent graphical representation capabilities, serves as an ideal tool for handling large datasets and precisely identifying the focal points and hotspots of research topics. Therefore, this study utilizes VOSviewer (version 1.6.19) and CiteSpace (version 6.1.R6), combined with in-depth literature analysis, to comprehensively examine and interpret the research theme of older adults’ technology acceptance through an integrated application of quantitative and qualitative methods.

Data source

Web of Science is a comprehensively recognized database in academia, featuring literature that has undergone rigorous peer review and editorial scrutiny (Lin and Yu 2024b ; Mongeon and Paul-Hus 2016 ; Pranckutė 2021 ). This study utilizes the Web of Science Core Collection as its data source, specifically including three major citation indices: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), and Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI). These indices encompass high-quality research literature in the fields of science, social sciences, and arts and humanities, ensuring the comprehensiveness and reliability of the data. We combined “older adults” with “technology acceptance” through thematic search, with the specific search strategy being: TS = (elder OR elderly OR aging OR ageing OR senile OR senior OR old people OR “older adult*”) AND TS = (“technology acceptance” OR “user acceptance” OR “consumer acceptance”). The time span of literature search is from 2013 to 2023, with the types limited to “Article” and “Review” and the language to “English”. Additionally, the search was completed by October 27, 2023, to avoid data discrepancies caused by database updates. The initial search yielded 764 journal articles. Given that searches often retrieve articles that are superficially relevant but actually non-compliant, manual screening post-search was essential to ensure the relevance of the literature (Chen et al. 2024 ). Through manual screening, articles significantly deviating from the research theme were eliminated and rigorously reviewed. Ultimately, this study obtained 500 valid sample articles from the Web of Science Core Collection. The complete PRISMA screening process is illustrated in Fig. 1 .

Presentation of the data culling process in detail.

Data standardization

Raw data exported from databases often contain multiple expressions of the same terminology (Nguyen and Hallinger 2020 ). To ensure the accuracy and consistency of data, it is necessary to standardize the raw data (Strotmann and Zhao 2012 ). This study follows the data standardization process proposed by Taskin and Al ( 2019 ), mainly executing the following operations:

(1) Standardization of author and institution names is conducted to address different name expressions for the same author. For instance, “Chan, Alan Hoi Shou” and “Chan, Alan H. S.” are considered the same author, and distinct authors with the same name are differentiated by adding identifiers. Diverse forms of institutional names are unified to address variations caused by name changes or abbreviations, such as standardizing “FRANKFURT UNIV APPL SCI” and “Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences,” as well as “Chinese University of Hong Kong” and “University of Hong Kong” to consistent names.

(2) Different expressions of journal names are unified. For example, “International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction” and “Int J Hum Comput Interact” are standardized to a single name. This ensures consistency in journal names and prevents misclassification of literature due to differing journal names. Additionally, it involves checking if the journals have undergone name changes in the past decade to prevent any impact on the analysis due to such changes.

(3) Keywords data are cleansed by removing words that do not directly pertain to specific research content (e.g., people, review), merging synonyms (e.g., “UX” and “User Experience,” “aging-in-place” and “aging in place”), and standardizing plural forms of keywords (e.g., “assistive technologies” and “assistive technology,” “social robots” and “social robot”). This reduces redundant information in knowledge mapping.

Bibliometric results and analysis

Distribution power (rq1), literature descriptive statistical analysis.

Table 1 presents a detailed descriptive statistical overview of the literature in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance. After deduplication using the CiteSpace software, this study confirmed a valid sample size of 500 articles. Authored by 1839 researchers, the documents encompass 792 research institutions across 54 countries and are published in 217 different academic journals. As of the search cutoff date, these articles have accumulated 13,829 citations, with an annual average of 1156 citations, and an average of 27.66 citations per article. The h-index, a composite metric of quantity and quality of scientific output (Kamrani et al. 2021 ), reached 60 in this study.

Trends in publications and disciplinary distribution

The number of publications and citations are significant indicators of the research field’s development, reflecting its continuity, attention, and impact (Ale Ebrahim et al. 2014 ). The ranking of annual publications and citations in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance studies is presented chronologically in Fig. 2A . The figure shows a clear upward trend in the amount of literature in this field. Between 2013 and 2017, the number of publications increased slowly and decreased in 2018. However, in 2019, the number of publications increased rapidly to 52 and reached a peak of 108 in 2022, which is 6.75 times higher than in 2013. In 2022, the frequency of document citations reached its highest point with 3466 citations, reflecting the widespread recognition and citation of research in this field. Moreover, the curve of the annual number of publications fits a quadratic function, with a goodness-of-fit R 2 of 0.9661, indicating that the number of future publications is expected to increase even more rapidly.

A Trends in trends in annual publications and citations (2013–2023). B Overlay analysis of the distribution of discipline fields.

Figure 2B shows that research on older adults’ technology acceptance involves the integration of multidisciplinary knowledge. According to Web of Science Categories, these 500 articles are distributed across 85 different disciplines. We have tabulated the top ten disciplines by publication volume (Table 2 ), which include Medical Informatics (75 articles, 15.00%), Health Care Sciences & Services (71 articles, 14.20%), Gerontology (61 articles, 12.20%), Public Environmental & Occupational Health (57 articles, 11.40%), and Geriatrics & Gerontology (52 articles, 10.40%), among others. The high output in these disciplines reflects the concentrated global academic interest in this comprehensive research topic. Additionally, interdisciplinary research approaches provide diverse perspectives and a solid theoretical foundation for studies on older adults’ technology acceptance, also paving the way for new research directions.

Knowledge flow analysis

A dual-map overlay is a CiteSpace map superimposed on top of a base map, which shows the interrelationships between journals in different domains, representing the publication and citation activities in each domain (Chen and Leydesdorff 2014 ). The overlay map reveals the link between the citing domain (on the left side) and the cited domain (on the right side), reflecting the knowledge flow of the discipline at the journal level (Leydesdorff and Rafols 2012 ). We utilize the in-built Z-score algorithm of the software to cluster the graph, as shown in Fig. 3 .

The left side shows the citing journal, and the right side shows the cited journal.

Figure 3 shows the distribution of citing journals clusters for older adults’ technology acceptance on the left side, while the right side refers to the main cited journals clusters. Two knowledge flow citation trajectories were obtained; they are presented by the color of the cited regions, and the thickness of these trajectories is proportional to the Z-score scaled frequency of citations (Chen et al. 2014 ). Within the cited regions, the most popular fields with the most records covered are “HEALTH, NURSING, MEDICINE” and “PSYCHOLOGY, EDUCATION, SOCIAL”, and the elliptical aspect ratio of these two fields stands out. Fields have prominent elliptical aspect ratios, highlighting their significant influence on older adults’ technology acceptance research. Additionally, the major citation trajectories originate in these two areas and progress to the frontier research area of “PSYCHOLOGY, EDUCATION, HEALTH”. It is worth noting that the citation trajectory from “PSYCHOLOGY, EDUCATION, SOCIAL” has a significant Z-value (z = 6.81), emphasizing the significance and impact of this development path. In the future, “MATHEMATICS, SYSTEMS, MATHEMATICAL”, “MOLECULAR, BIOLOGY, IMMUNOLOGY”, and “NEUROLOGY, SPORTS, OPHTHALMOLOGY” may become emerging fields. The fields of “MEDICINE, MEDICAL, CLINICAL” may be emerging areas of cutting-edge research.

Main research journals analysis

Table 3 provides statistics for the top ten journals by publication volume in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance. Together, these journals have published 137 articles, accounting for 27.40% of the total publications, indicating that there is no highly concentrated core group of journals in this field, with publications being relatively dispersed. Notably, Computers in Human Behavior , Journal of Medical Internet Research , and International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction each lead with 15 publications. In terms of citation metrics, International Journal of Medical Informatics and Computers in Human Behavior stand out significantly, with the former accumulating a total of 1,904 citations, averaging 211.56 citations per article, and the latter totaling 1,449 citations, with an average of 96.60 citations per article. These figures emphasize the academic authority and widespread impact of these journals within the research field.

Research power (RQ2)

Countries and collaborations analysis.

The analysis revealed the global research pattern for country distribution and collaboration (Chen et al. 2019 ). Figure 4A shows the network of national collaborations on older adults’ technology acceptance research. The size of the bubbles represents the amount of publications in each country, while the thickness of the connecting lines expresses the closeness of the collaboration among countries. Generally, this research subject has received extensive international attention, with China and the USA publishing far more than any other countries. China has established notable research collaborations with the USA, UK and Malaysia in this field, while other countries have collaborations, but the closeness is relatively low and scattered. Figure 4B shows the annual publication volume dynamics of the top ten countries in terms of total publications. Since 2017, China has consistently increased its annual publications, while the USA has remained relatively stable. In 2019, the volume of publications in each country increased significantly, this was largely due to the global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to increased reliance on information technology among the elderly for medical consultations, online socialization, and health management (Sinha et al. 2021 ). This phenomenon has led to research advances in technology acceptance among older adults in various countries. Table 4 shows that the top ten countries account for 93.20% of the total cumulative number of publications, with each country having published more than 20 papers. Among these ten countries, all of them except China are developed countries, indicating that the research field of older adults’ technology acceptance has received general attention from developed countries. Currently, China and the USA were the leading countries in terms of publications with 111 and 104 respectively, accounting for 22.20% and 20.80%. The UK, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands also made significant contributions. The USA and China ranked first and second in terms of the number of citations, while the Netherlands had the highest average citations, indicating the high impact and quality of its research. The UK has shown outstanding performance in international cooperation, while the USA highlights its significant academic influence in this field with the highest h-index value.

A National collaboration network. B Annual volume of publications in the top 10 countries.

Institutions and authors analysis

Analyzing the number of publications and citations can reveal an institution’s or author’s research strength and influence in a particular research area (Kwiek 2021 ). Tables 5 and 6 show the statistics of the institutions and authors whose publication counts are in the top ten, respectively. As shown in Table 5 , higher education institutions hold the main position in this research field. Among the top ten institutions, City University of Hong Kong and The University of Hong Kong from China lead with 14 and 9 publications, respectively. City University of Hong Kong has the highest h-index, highlighting its significant influence in the field. It is worth noting that Tilburg University in the Netherlands is not among the top five in terms of publications, but the high average citation count (130.14) of its literature demonstrates the high quality of its research.

After analyzing the authors’ output using Price’s Law (Redner 1998 ), the highest number of publications among the authors counted ( n  = 10) defines a publication threshold of 3 for core authors in this research area. As a result of quantitative screening, a total of 63 core authors were identified. Table 6 shows that Chen from Zhejiang University, China, Ziefle from RWTH Aachen University, Germany, and Rogers from Macquarie University, Australia, were the top three authors in terms of the number of publications, with 10, 9, and 8 articles, respectively. In terms of average citation rate, Peek and Wouters, both scholars from the Netherlands, have significantly higher rates than other scholars, with 183.2 and 152.67 respectively. This suggests that their research is of high quality and widely recognized. Additionally, Chen and Rogers have high h-indices in this field.

Knowledge base and theme progress (RQ3)

Research knowledge base.

Co-citation relationships occur when two documents are cited together (Zhang and Zhu 2022 ). Co-citation mapping uses references as nodes to represent the knowledge base of a subject area (Min et al. 2021). Figure 5A illustrates co-occurrence mapping in older adults’ technology acceptance research, where larger nodes signify higher co-citation frequencies. Co-citation cluster analysis can be used to explore knowledge structure and research boundaries (Hota et al. 2020 ; Shiau et al. 2023 ). The co-citation clustering mapping of older adults’ technology acceptance research literature (Fig. 5B ) shows that the Q value of the clustering result is 0.8129 (>0.3), and the average value of the weight S is 0.9391 (>0.7), indicating that the clusters are uniformly distributed with a significant and credible structure. This further proves that the boundaries of the research field are clear and there is significant differentiation in the field. The figure features 18 cluster labels, each associated with thematic color blocks corresponding to different time slices. Highlighted emerging research themes include #2 Smart Home Technology, #7 Social Live, and #10 Customer Service. Furthermore, the clustering labels extracted are primarily classified into three categories: theoretical model deepening, emerging technology applications, research methods and evaluation, as detailed in Table 7 .

A Co-citation analysis of references. B Clustering network analysis of references.

Seminal literature analysis

The top ten nodes in terms of co-citation frequency were selected for further analysis. Table 8 displays the corresponding node information. Studies were categorized into four main groups based on content analysis. (1) Research focusing on specific technology usage by older adults includes studies by Peek et al. ( 2014 ), Ma et al. ( 2016 ), Hoque and Sorwar ( 2017 ), and Li et al. ( 2019 ), who investigated the factors influencing the use of e-technology, smartphones, mHealth, and smart wearables, respectively. (2) Concerning the development of theoretical models of technology acceptance, Chen and Chan ( 2014 ) introduced the Senior Technology Acceptance Model (STAM), and Macedo ( 2017 ) analyzed the predictive power of UTAUT2 in explaining older adults’ intentional behaviors and information technology usage. (3) In exploring older adults’ information technology adoption and behavior, Lee and Coughlin ( 2015 ) emphasized that the adoption of technology by older adults is a multifactorial process that includes performance, price, value, usability, affordability, accessibility, technical support, social support, emotion, independence, experience, and confidence. Yusif et al. ( 2016 ) conducted a literature review examining the key barriers affecting older adults’ adoption of assistive technology, including factors such as privacy, trust, functionality/added value, cost, and stigma. (4) From the perspective of research into older adults’ technology acceptance, Mitzner et al. ( 2019 ) assessed the long-term usage of computer systems designed for the elderly, whereas Guner and Acarturk ( 2020 ) compared information technology usage and acceptance between older and younger adults. The breadth and prevalence of this literature make it a vital reference for researchers in the field, also providing new perspectives and inspiration for future research directions.

Research thematic progress

Burst citation is a node of literature that guides the sudden change in dosage, which usually represents a prominent development or major change in a particular field, with innovative and forward-looking qualities. By analyzing the emergent literature, it is often easy to understand the dynamics of the subject area, mapping the emerging thematic change (Chen et al. 2022 ). Figure 6 shows the burst citation mapping in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance research, with burst citations represented by red nodes (Fig. 6A ). For the ten papers with the highest burst intensity (Fig. 6B ), this study will conduct further analysis in conjunction with literature review.

A Burst detection of co-citation. B The top 10 references with the strongest citation bursts.

As shown in Fig. 6 , Mitzner et al. ( 2010 ) broke the stereotype that older adults are fearful of technology, found that they actually have positive attitudes toward technology, and emphasized the centrality of ease of use and usefulness in the process of technology acceptance. This finding provides an important foundation for subsequent research. During the same period, Wagner et al. ( 2010 ) conducted theory-deepening and applied research on technology acceptance among older adults. The research focused on older adults’ interactions with computers from the perspective of Social Cognitive Theory (SCT). This expanded the understanding of technology acceptance, particularly regarding the relationship between behavior, environment, and other SCT elements. In addition, Pan and Jordan-Marsh ( 2010 ) extended the TAM to examine the interactions among predictors of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, subjective norm, and convenience conditions when older adults use the Internet, taking into account the moderating roles of gender and age. Heerink et al. ( 2010 ) adapted and extended the UTAUT, constructed a technology acceptance model specifically designed for older users’ acceptance of assistive social agents, and validated it using controlled experiments and longitudinal data, explaining intention to use by combining functional assessment and social interaction variables.

Then the research theme shifted to an in-depth analysis of the factors influencing technology acceptance among older adults. Two papers with high burst strengths emerged during this period: Peek et al. ( 2014 ) (Strength = 12.04), Chen and Chan ( 2014 ) (Strength = 9.81). Through a systematic literature review and empirical study, Peek STM and Chen K, among others, identified multidimensional factors that influence older adults’ technology acceptance. Peek et al. ( 2014 ) analyzed literature on the acceptance of in-home care technology among older adults and identified six factors that influence their acceptance: concerns about technology, expected benefits, technology needs, technology alternatives, social influences, and older adult characteristics, with a focus on differences between pre- and post-implementation factors. Chen and Chan ( 2014 ) constructed the STAM by administering a questionnaire to 1012 older adults and adding eight important factors, including technology anxiety, self-efficacy, cognitive ability, and physical function, based on the TAM. This enriches the theoretical foundation of the field. In addition, Braun ( 2013 ) highlighted the role of perceived usefulness, trust in social networks, and frequency of Internet use in older adults’ use of social networks, while ease of use and social pressure were not significant influences. These findings contribute to the study of older adults’ technology acceptance within specific technology application domains.

Recent research has focused on empirical studies of personal factors and emerging technologies. Ma et al. ( 2016 ) identified key personal factors affecting smartphone acceptance among older adults through structured questionnaires and face-to-face interviews with 120 participants. The study found that cost, self-satisfaction, and convenience were important factors influencing perceived usefulness and ease of use. This study offers empirical evidence to comprehend the main factors that drive smartphone acceptance among Chinese older adults. Additionally, Yusif et al. ( 2016 ) presented an overview of the obstacles that hinder older adults’ acceptance of assistive technologies, focusing on privacy, trust, and functionality.

In summary, research on older adults’ technology acceptance has shifted from early theoretical deepening and analysis of influencing factors to empirical studies in the areas of personal factors and emerging technologies, which have greatly enriched the theoretical basis of older adults’ technology acceptance and provided practical guidance for the design of emerging technology products.

Research hotspots, evolutionary trends, and quality distribution (RQ4)

Core keywords analysis.

Keywords concise the main idea and core of the literature, and are a refined summary of the research content (Huang et al. 2021 ). In CiteSpace, nodes with a centrality value greater than 0.1 are considered to be critical nodes. Analyzing keywords with high frequency and centrality helps to visualize the hot topics in the research field (Park et al. 2018 ). The merged keywords were imported into CiteSpace, and the top 10 keywords were counted and sorted by frequency and centrality respectively, as shown in Table 9 . The results show that the keyword “TAM” has the highest frequency (92), followed by “UTAUT” (24), which reflects that the in-depth study of the existing technology acceptance model and its theoretical expansion occupy a central position in research related to older adults’ technology acceptance. Furthermore, the terms ‘assistive technology’ and ‘virtual reality’ are both high-frequency and high-centrality terms (frequency = 17, centrality = 0.10), indicating that the research on assistive technology and virtual reality for older adults is the focus of current academic attention.

Research hotspots analysis

Using VOSviewer for keyword co-occurrence analysis organizes keywords into groups or clusters based on their intrinsic connections and frequencies, clearly highlighting the research field’s hot topics. The connectivity among keywords reveals correlations between different topics. To ensure accuracy, the analysis only considered the authors’ keywords. Subsequently, the keywords were filtered by setting the keyword frequency to 5 to obtain the keyword clustering map of the research on older adults’ technology acceptance research keyword clustering mapping (Fig. 7 ), combined with the keyword co-occurrence clustering network (Fig. 7A ) and the corresponding density situation (Fig. 7B ) to make a detailed analysis of the following four groups of clustered themes.

A Co-occurrence clustering network. B Keyword density.

Cluster #1—Research on the factors influencing technology adoption among older adults is a prominent topic, covering age, gender, self-efficacy, attitude, and and intention to use (Berkowsky et al. 2017 ; Wang et al. 2017 ). It also examined older adults’ attitudes towards and acceptance of digital health technologies (Ahmad and Mozelius, 2022 ). Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic, significantly impacting older adults’ technology attitudes and usage, has underscored the study’s importance and urgency. Therefore, it is crucial to conduct in-depth studies on how older adults accept, adopt, and effectively use new technologies, to address their needs and help them overcome the digital divide within digital inclusion. This will improve their quality of life and healthcare experiences.

Cluster #2—Research focuses on how older adults interact with assistive technologies, especially assistive robots and health monitoring devices, emphasizing trust, usability, and user experience as crucial factors (Halim et al. 2022 ). Moreover, health monitoring technologies effectively track and manage health issues common in older adults, like dementia and mild cognitive impairment (Lussier et al. 2018 ; Piau et al. 2019 ). Interactive exercise games and virtual reality have been deployed to encourage more physical and cognitive engagement among older adults (Campo-Prieto et al. 2021 ). Personalized and innovative technology significantly enhances older adults’ participation, improving their health and well-being.

Cluster #3—Optimizing health management for older adults using mobile technology. With the development of mobile health (mHealth) and health information technology, mobile applications, smartphones, and smart wearable devices have become effective tools to help older users better manage chronic conditions, conduct real-time health monitoring, and even receive telehealth services (Dupuis and Tsotsos 2018 ; Olmedo-Aguirre et al. 2022 ; Kim et al. 2014 ). Additionally, these technologies can mitigate the problem of healthcare resource inequality, especially in developing countries. Older adults’ acceptance and use of these technologies are significantly influenced by their behavioral intentions, motivational factors, and self-management skills. These internal motivational factors, along with external factors, jointly affect older adults’ performance in health management and quality of life.

Cluster #4—Research on technology-assisted home care for older adults is gaining popularity. Environmentally assisted living enhances older adults’ independence and comfort at home, offering essential support and security. This has a crucial impact on promoting healthy aging (Friesen et al. 2016 ; Wahlroos et al. 2023 ). The smart home is a core application in this field, providing a range of solutions that facilitate independent living for the elderly in a highly integrated and user-friendly manner. This fulfills different dimensions of living and health needs (Majumder et al. 2017 ). Moreover, eHealth offers accurate and personalized health management and healthcare services for older adults (Delmastro et al. 2018 ), ensuring their needs are met at home. Research in this field often employs qualitative methods and structural equation modeling to fully understand older adults’ needs and experiences at home and analyze factors influencing technology adoption.

Evolutionary trends analysis

To gain a deeper understanding of the evolutionary trends in research hotspots within the field of older adults’ technology acceptance, we conducted a statistical analysis of the average appearance times of keywords, using CiteSpace to generate the time-zone evolution mapping (Fig. 8 ) and burst keywords. The time-zone mapping visually displays the evolution of keywords over time, intuitively reflecting the frequency and initial appearance of keywords in research, commonly used to identify trends in research topics (Jing et al. 2024a ; Kumar et al. 2021 ). Table 10 lists the top 15 keywords by burst strength, with the red sections indicating high-frequency citations and their burst strength in specific years. These burst keywords reveal the focus and trends of research themes over different periods (Kleinberg 2002 ). Combining insights from the time-zone mapping and burst keywords provides more objective and accurate research insights (Wang et al. 2023b ).

Reflecting the frequency and time of first appearance of keywords in the study.

An integrated analysis of Fig. 8 and Table 10 shows that early research on older adults’ technology acceptance primarily focused on factors such as perceived usefulness, ease of use, and attitudes towards information technology, including their use of computers and the internet (Pan and Jordan-Marsh 2010 ), as well as differences in technology use between older adults and other age groups (Guner and Acarturk 2020 ). Subsequently, the research focus expanded to improving the quality of life for older adults, exploring how technology can optimize health management and enhance the possibility of independent living, emphasizing the significant role of technology in improving the quality of life for the elderly. With ongoing technological advancements, recent research has shifted towards areas such as “virtual reality,” “telehealth,” and “human-robot interaction,” with a focus on the user experience of older adults (Halim et al. 2022 ). The appearance of keywords such as “physical activity” and “exercise” highlights the value of technology in promoting physical activity and health among older adults. This phase of research tends to make cutting-edge technology genuinely serve the practical needs of older adults, achieving its widespread application in daily life. Additionally, research has focused on expanding and quantifying theoretical models of older adults’ technology acceptance, involving keywords such as “perceived risk”, “validation” and “UTAUT”.

In summary, from 2013 to 2023, the field of older adults’ technology acceptance has evolved from initial explorations of influencing factors, to comprehensive enhancements in quality of life and health management, and further to the application and deepening of theoretical models and cutting-edge technologies. This research not only reflects the diversity and complexity of the field but also demonstrates a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of older adults’ interactions with technology across various life scenarios and needs.

Research quality distribution

To reveal the distribution of research quality in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance, a strategic diagram analysis is employed to calculate and illustrate the internal development and interrelationships among various research themes (Xie et al. 2020 ). The strategic diagram uses Centrality as the X-axis and Density as the Y-axis to divide into four quadrants, where the X-axis represents the strength of the connection between thematic clusters and other themes, with higher values indicating a central position in the research field; the Y-axis indicates the level of development within the thematic clusters, with higher values denoting a more mature and widely recognized field (Li and Zhou 2020 ).

Through cluster analysis and manual verification, this study categorized 61 core keywords (Frequency ≥5) into 11 thematic clusters. Subsequently, based on the keywords covered by each thematic cluster, the research themes and their directions for each cluster were summarized (Table 11 ), and the centrality and density coordinates for each cluster were precisely calculated (Table 12 ). Finally, a strategic diagram of the older adults’ technology acceptance research field was constructed (Fig. 9 ). Based on the distribution of thematic clusters across the quadrants in the strategic diagram, the structure and developmental trends of the field were interpreted.

Classification and visualization of theme clusters based on density and centrality.

As illustrated in Fig. 9 , (1) the theme clusters of #3 Usage Experience and #4 Assisted Living Technology are in the first quadrant, characterized by high centrality and density. Their internal cohesion and close links with other themes indicate their mature development, systematic research content or directions have been formed, and they have a significant influence on other themes. These themes play a central role in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance and have promising prospects. (2) The theme clusters of #6 Smart Devices, #9 Theoretical Models, and #10 Mobile Health Applications are in the second quadrant, with higher density but lower centrality. These themes have strong internal connections but weaker external links, indicating that these three themes have received widespread attention from researchers and have been the subject of related research, but more as self-contained systems and exhibit independence. Therefore, future research should further explore in-depth cooperation and cross-application with other themes. (3) The theme clusters of #7 Human-Robot Interaction, #8 Characteristics of the Elderly, and #11 Research Methods are in the third quadrant, with lower centrality and density. These themes are loosely connected internally and have weak links with others, indicating their developmental immaturity. Compared to other topics, they belong to the lower attention edge and niche themes, and there is a need for further investigation. (4) The theme clusters of #1 Digital Healthcare Technology, #2 Psychological Factors, and #5 Socio-Cultural Factors are located in the fourth quadrant, with high centrality but low density. Although closely associated with other research themes, the internal cohesion within these clusters is relatively weak. This suggests that while these themes are closely linked to other research areas, their own development remains underdeveloped, indicating a core immaturity. Nevertheless, these themes are crucial within the research domain of elderly technology acceptance and possess significant potential for future exploration.

Discussion on distribution power (RQ1)

Over the past decade, academic interest and influence in the area of older adults’ technology acceptance have significantly increased. This trend is evidenced by a quantitative analysis of publication and citation volumes, particularly noticeable in 2019 and 2022, where there was a substantial rise in both metrics. The rise is closely linked to the widespread adoption of emerging technologies such as smart homes, wearable devices, and telemedicine among older adults. While these technologies have enhanced their quality of life, they also pose numerous challenges, sparking extensive research into their acceptance, usage behaviors, and influencing factors among the older adults (Pirzada et al. 2022 ; Garcia Reyes et al. 2023 ). Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a surge in technology demand among older adults, especially in areas like medical consultation, online socialization, and health management, further highlighting the importance and challenges of technology. Health risks and social isolation have compelled older adults to rely on technology for daily activities, accelerating its adoption and application within this demographic. This phenomenon has made technology acceptance a critical issue, driving societal and academic focus on the study of technology acceptance among older adults.

The flow of knowledge at the level of high-output disciplines and journals, along with the primary publishing outlets, indicates the highly interdisciplinary nature of research into older adults’ technology acceptance. This reflects the complexity and breadth of issues related to older adults’ technology acceptance, necessitating the integration of multidisciplinary knowledge and approaches. Currently, research is primarily focused on medical health and human-computer interaction, demonstrating academic interest in improving health and quality of life for older adults and addressing the urgent needs related to their interactions with technology. In the field of medical health, research aims to provide advanced and innovative healthcare technologies and services to meet the challenges of an aging population while improving the quality of life for older adults (Abdi et al. 2020 ; Wilson et al. 2021 ). In the field of human-computer interaction, research is focused on developing smarter and more user-friendly interaction models to meet the needs of older adults in the digital age, enabling them to actively participate in social activities and enjoy a higher quality of life (Sayago, 2019 ). These studies are crucial for addressing the challenges faced by aging societies, providing increased support and opportunities for the health, welfare, and social participation of older adults.

Discussion on research power (RQ2)

This study analyzes leading countries and collaboration networks, core institutions and authors, revealing the global research landscape and distribution of research strength in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance, and presents quantitative data on global research trends. From the analysis of country distribution and collaborations, China and the USA hold dominant positions in this field, with developed countries like the UK, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands also excelling in international cooperation and research influence. The significant investment in technological research and the focus on the technological needs of older adults by many developed countries reflect their rapidly aging societies, policy support, and resource allocation.

China is the only developing country that has become a major contributor in this field, indicating its growing research capabilities and high priority given to aging societies and technological innovation. Additionally, China has close collaborations with countries such as USA, the UK, and Malaysia, driven not only by technological research needs but also by shared challenges and complementarities in aging issues among these nations. For instance, the UK has extensive experience in social welfare and aging research, providing valuable theoretical guidance and practical experience. International collaborations, aimed at addressing the challenges of aging, integrate the strengths of various countries, advancing in-depth and widespread development in the research of technology acceptance among older adults.

At the institutional and author level, City University of Hong Kong leads in publication volume, with research teams led by Chan and Chen demonstrating significant academic activity and contributions. Their research primarily focuses on older adults’ acceptance and usage behaviors of various technologies, including smartphones, smart wearables, and social robots (Chen et al. 2015 ; Li et al. 2019 ; Ma et al. 2016 ). These studies, targeting specific needs and product characteristics of older adults, have developed new models of technology acceptance based on existing frameworks, enhancing the integration of these technologies into their daily lives and laying a foundation for further advancements in the field. Although Tilburg University has a smaller publication output, it holds significant influence in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance. Particularly, the high citation rate of Peek’s studies highlights their excellence in research. Peek extensively explored older adults’ acceptance and usage of home care technologies, revealing the complexity and dynamics of their technology use behaviors. His research spans from identifying systemic influencing factors (Peek et al. 2014 ; Peek et al. 2016 ), emphasizing familial impacts (Luijkx et al. 2015 ), to constructing comprehensive models (Peek et al. 2017 ), and examining the dynamics of long-term usage (Peek et al. 2019 ), fully reflecting the evolving technology landscape and the changing needs of older adults. Additionally, the ongoing contributions of researchers like Ziefle, Rogers, and Wouters in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance demonstrate their research influence and leadership. These researchers have significantly enriched the knowledge base in this area with their diverse perspectives. For instance, Ziefle has uncovered the complex attitudes of older adults towards technology usage, especially the trade-offs between privacy and security, and how different types of activities affect their privacy needs (Maidhof et al. 2023 ; Mujirishvili et al. 2023 ; Schomakers and Ziefle 2023 ; Wilkowska et al. 2022 ), reflecting a deep exploration and ongoing innovation in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance.

Discussion on knowledge base and thematic progress (RQ3)

Through co-citation analysis and systematic review of seminal literature, this study reveals the knowledge foundation and thematic progress in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance. Co-citation networks and cluster analyses illustrate the structural themes of the research, delineating the differentiation and boundaries within this field. Additionally, burst detection analysis offers a valuable perspective for understanding the thematic evolution in the field of technology acceptance among older adults. The development and innovation of theoretical models are foundational to this research. Researchers enhance the explanatory power of constructed models by deepening and expanding existing technology acceptance theories to address theoretical limitations. For instance, Heerink et al. ( 2010 ) modified and expanded the UTAUT model by integrating functional assessment and social interaction variables to create the almere model. This model significantly enhances the ability to explain the intentions of older users in utilizing assistive social agents and improves the explanation of actual usage behaviors. Additionally, Chen and Chan ( 2014 ) extended the TAM to include age-related health and capability features of older adults, creating the STAM, which substantially improves predictions of older adults’ technology usage behaviors. Personal attributes, health and capability features, and facilitating conditions have a direct impact on technology acceptance. These factors more effectively predict older adults’ technology usage behaviors than traditional attitudinal factors.

With the advancement of technology and the application of emerging technologies, new research topics have emerged, increasingly focusing on older adults’ acceptance and use of these technologies. Prior to this, the study by Mitzner et al. ( 2010 ) challenged the stereotype of older adults’ conservative attitudes towards technology, highlighting the central roles of usability and usefulness in the technology acceptance process. This discovery laid an important foundation for subsequent research. Research fields such as “smart home technology,” “social life,” and “customer service” are emerging, indicating a shift in focus towards the practical and social applications of technology in older adults’ lives. Research not only focuses on the technology itself but also on how these technologies integrate into older adults’ daily lives and how they can improve the quality of life through technology. For instance, studies such as those by Ma et al. ( 2016 ), Hoque and Sorwar ( 2017 ), and Li et al. ( 2019 ) have explored factors influencing older adults’ use of smartphones, mHealth, and smart wearable devices.

Furthermore, the diversification of research methodologies and innovation in evaluation techniques, such as the use of mixed methods, structural equation modeling (SEM), and neural network (NN) approaches, have enhanced the rigor and reliability of the findings, enabling more precise identification of the factors and mechanisms influencing technology acceptance. Talukder et al. ( 2020 ) employed an effective multimethodological strategy by integrating SEM and NN to leverage the complementary strengths of both approaches, thus overcoming their individual limitations and more accurately analyzing and predicting older adults’ acceptance of wearable health technologies (WHT). SEM is utilized to assess the determinants’ impact on the adoption of WHT, while neural network models validate SEM outcomes and predict the significance of key determinants. This combined approach not only boosts the models’ reliability and explanatory power but also provides a nuanced understanding of the motivations and barriers behind older adults’ acceptance of WHT, offering deep research insights.

Overall, co-citation analysis of the literature in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance has uncovered deeper theoretical modeling and empirical studies on emerging technologies, while emphasizing the importance of research methodological and evaluation innovations in understanding complex social science issues. These findings are crucial for guiding the design and marketing strategies of future technology products, especially in the rapidly growing market of older adults.

Discussion on research hotspots and evolutionary trends (RQ4)

By analyzing core keywords, we can gain deep insights into the hot topics, evolutionary trends, and quality distribution of research in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance. The frequent occurrence of the keywords “TAM” and “UTAUT” indicates that the applicability and theoretical extension of existing technology acceptance models among older adults remain a focal point in academia. This phenomenon underscores the enduring influence of the studies by Davis ( 1989 ) and Venkatesh et al. ( 2003 ), whose models provide a robust theoretical framework for explaining and predicting older adults’ acceptance and usage of emerging technologies. With the widespread application of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data technologies, these theoretical models have incorporated new variables such as perceived risk, trust, and privacy issues (Amin et al. 2024 ; Chen et al. 2024 ; Jing et al. 2024b ; Seibert et al. 2021 ; Wang et al. 2024b ), advancing the theoretical depth and empirical research in this field.

Keyword co-occurrence cluster analysis has revealed multiple research hotspots in the field, including factors influencing technology adoption, interactive experiences between older adults and assistive technologies, the application of mobile health technology in health management, and technology-assisted home care. These studies primarily focus on enhancing the quality of life and health management of older adults through emerging technologies, particularly in the areas of ambient assisted living, smart health monitoring, and intelligent medical care. In these domains, the role of AI technology is increasingly significant (Qian et al. 2021 ; Ho 2020 ). With the evolution of next-generation information technologies, AI is increasingly integrated into elder care systems, offering intelligent, efficient, and personalized service solutions by analyzing the lifestyles and health conditions of older adults. This integration aims to enhance older adults’ quality of life in aspects such as health monitoring and alerts, rehabilitation assistance, daily health management, and emotional support (Lee et al. 2023 ). A survey indicates that 83% of older adults prefer AI-driven solutions when selecting smart products, demonstrating the increasing acceptance of AI in elder care (Zhao and Li 2024 ). Integrating AI into elder care presents both opportunities and challenges, particularly in terms of user acceptance, trust, and long-term usage effects, which warrant further exploration (Mhlanga 2023 ). These studies will help better understand the profound impact of AI technology on the lifestyles of older adults and provide critical references for optimizing AI-driven elder care services.

The Time-zone evolution mapping and burst keyword analysis further reveal the evolutionary trends of research hotspots. Early studies focused on basic technology acceptance models and user perceptions, later expanding to include quality of life and health management. In recent years, research has increasingly focused on cutting-edge technologies such as virtual reality, telehealth, and human-robot interaction, with a concurrent emphasis on the user experience of older adults. This evolutionary process demonstrates a deepening shift from theoretical models to practical applications, underscoring the significant role of technology in enhancing the quality of life for older adults. Furthermore, the strategic coordinate mapping analysis clearly demonstrates the development and mutual influence of different research themes. High centrality and density in the themes of Usage Experience and Assisted Living Technology indicate their mature research status and significant impact on other themes. The themes of Smart Devices, Theoretical Models, and Mobile Health Applications demonstrate self-contained research trends. The themes of Human-Robot Interaction, Characteristics of the Elderly, and Research Methods are not yet mature, but they hold potential for development. Themes of Digital Healthcare Technology, Psychological Factors, and Socio-Cultural Factors are closely related to other themes, displaying core immaturity but significant potential.

In summary, the research hotspots in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance are diverse and dynamic, demonstrating the academic community’s profound understanding of how older adults interact with technology across various life contexts and needs. Under the influence of AI and big data, research should continue to focus on the application of emerging technologies among older adults, exploring in depth how they adapt to and effectively use these technologies. This not only enhances the quality of life and healthcare experiences for older adults but also drives ongoing innovation and development in this field.

Research agenda

Based on the above research findings, to further understand and promote technology acceptance and usage among older adults, we recommend future studies focus on refining theoretical models, exploring long-term usage, and assessing user experience in the following detailed aspects:

Refinement and validation of specific technology acceptance models for older adults: Future research should focus on developing and validating technology acceptance models based on individual characteristics, particularly considering variations in technology acceptance among older adults across different educational levels and cultural backgrounds. This includes factors such as age, gender, educational background, and cultural differences. Additionally, research should examine how well specific technologies, such as wearable devices and mobile health applications, meet the needs of older adults. Building on existing theoretical models, this research should integrate insights from multiple disciplines such as psychology, sociology, design, and engineering through interdisciplinary collaboration to create more accurate and comprehensive models, which should then be validated in relevant contexts.

Deepening the exploration of the relationship between long-term technology use and quality of life among older adults: The acceptance and use of technology by users is a complex and dynamic process (Seuwou et al. 2016 ). Existing research predominantly focuses on older adults’ initial acceptance or short-term use of new technologies; however, the impact of long-term use on their quality of life and health is more significant. Future research should focus on the evolution of older adults’ experiences and needs during long-term technology usage, and the enduring effects of technology on their social interactions, mental health, and life satisfaction. Through longitudinal studies and qualitative analysis, this research reveals the specific needs and challenges of older adults in long-term technology use, providing a basis for developing technologies and strategies that better meet their requirements. This understanding aids in comprehensively assessing the impact of technology on older adults’ quality of life and guiding the optimization and improvement of technological products.

Evaluating the Importance of User Experience in Research on Older Adults’ Technology Acceptance: Understanding the mechanisms of information technology acceptance and use is central to human-computer interaction research. Although technology acceptance models and user experience models differ in objectives, they share many potential intersections. Technology acceptance research focuses on structured prediction and assessment, while user experience research concentrates on interpreting design impacts and new frameworks. Integrating user experience to assess older adults’ acceptance of technology products and systems is crucial (Codfrey et al. 2022 ; Wang et al. 2019 ), particularly for older users, where specific product designs should emphasize practicality and usability (Fisk et al. 2020 ). Researchers need to explore innovative age-appropriate design methods to enhance older adults’ usage experience. This includes studying older users’ actual usage preferences and behaviors, optimizing user interfaces, and interaction designs. Integrating feedback from older adults to tailor products to their needs can further promote their acceptance and continued use of technology products.

Conclusions

This study conducted a systematic review of the literature on older adults’ technology acceptance over the past decade through bibliometric analysis, focusing on the distribution power, research power, knowledge base and theme progress, research hotspots, evolutionary trends, and quality distribution. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, this study has reached the following conclusions:

Technology acceptance among older adults has become a hot topic in the international academic community, involving the integration of knowledge across multiple disciplines, including Medical Informatics, Health Care Sciences Services, and Ergonomics. In terms of journals, “PSYCHOLOGY, EDUCATION, HEALTH” represents a leading field, with key publications including Computers in Human Behavior , Journal of Medical Internet Research , and International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction . These journals possess significant academic authority and extensive influence in the field.

Research on technology acceptance among older adults is particularly active in developed countries, with China and USA publishing significantly more than other nations. The Netherlands leads in high average citation rates, indicating the depth and impact of its research. Meanwhile, the UK stands out in terms of international collaboration. At the institutional level, City University of Hong Kong and The University of Hong Kong in China are in leading positions. Tilburg University in the Netherlands demonstrates exceptional research quality through its high average citation count. At the author level, Chen from China has the highest number of publications, while Peek from the Netherlands has the highest average citation count.

Co-citation analysis of references indicates that the knowledge base in this field is divided into three main categories: theoretical model deepening, emerging technology applications, and research methods and evaluation. Seminal literature focuses on four areas: specific technology use by older adults, expansion of theoretical models of technology acceptance, information technology adoption behavior, and research perspectives. Research themes have evolved from initial theoretical deepening and analysis of influencing factors to empirical studies on individual factors and emerging technologies.

Keyword analysis indicates that TAM and UTAUT are the most frequently occurring terms, while “assistive technology” and “virtual reality” are focal points with high frequency and centrality. Keyword clustering analysis reveals that research hotspots are concentrated on the influencing factors of technology adoption, human-robot interaction experiences, mobile health management, and technology for aging in place. Time-zone evolution mapping and burst keyword analysis have revealed the research evolution from preliminary exploration of influencing factors, to enhancements in quality of life and health management, and onto advanced technology applications and deepening of theoretical models. Furthermore, analysis of research quality distribution indicates that Usage Experience and Assisted Living Technology have become core topics, while Smart Devices, Theoretical Models, and Mobile Health Applications point towards future research directions.

Through this study, we have systematically reviewed the dynamics, core issues, and evolutionary trends in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance, constructing a comprehensive Knowledge Mapping of the domain and presenting a clear framework of existing research. This not only lays the foundation for subsequent theoretical discussions and innovative applications in the field but also provides an important reference for relevant scholars.

Limitations

To our knowledge, this is the first bibliometric analysis concerning technology acceptance among older adults, and we adhered strictly to bibliometric standards throughout our research. However, this study relies on the Web of Science Core Collection, and while its authority and breadth are widely recognized, this choice may have missed relevant literature published in other significant databases such as PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar, potentially overlooking some critical academic contributions. Moreover, given that our analysis was confined to literature in English, it may not reflect studies published in other languages, somewhat limiting the global representativeness of our data sample.

It is noteworthy that with the rapid development of AI technology, its increasingly widespread application in elderly care services is significantly transforming traditional care models. AI is profoundly altering the lifestyles of the elderly, from health monitoring and smart diagnostics to intelligent home systems and personalized care, significantly enhancing their quality of life and health care standards. The potential for AI technology within the elderly population is immense, and research in this area is rapidly expanding. However, due to the restrictive nature of the search terms used in this study, it did not fully cover research in this critical area, particularly in addressing key issues such as trust, privacy, and ethics.

Consequently, future research should not only expand data sources, incorporating multilingual and multidatabase literature, but also particularly focus on exploring older adults’ acceptance of AI technology and its applications, in order to construct a more comprehensive academic landscape of older adults’ technology acceptance, thereby enriching and extending the knowledge system and academic trends in this field.

Data availability

The datasets analyzed during the current study are available in the Dataverse repository: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/6K0GJH .

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This research was supported by the Social Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province in China (Grant No. 2023J014).

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Xianru Shang, Zijian Liu, Chen Gong, Zhigang Hu & Yuexuan Wu

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Conceptualization, XS, YW, CW; methodology, XS, ZL, CG, CW; software, XS, CG, YW; writing-original draft preparation, XS, CW; writing-review and editing, XS, CG, ZH, CW; supervision, ZL, ZH, CW; project administration, ZL, ZH, CW; funding acquisition, XS, CG. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. All authors have read and approved the re-submission of the manuscript.

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Shang, X., Liu, Z., Gong, C. et al. Knowledge mapping and evolution of research on older adults’ technology acceptance: a bibliometric study from 2013 to 2023. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11 , 1115 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03658-2

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The Impact of Social Media on Personal Relationships

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The deductive argument, examining premise 1: reduced face-to-face interaction, examining premise 2: diminished quality of personal relationships, evaluating the conclusion.

• Premise 1: Excessive use of social media leads to reduced face-to-face interaction and communication with loved ones.
• Premise 2: Reduced face-to-face interaction diminishes the quality of personal relationships.
• Conclusion: Therefore, excessive use of social media leads to a decline in the quality of personal relationships.

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