Challenges and opportunities for social support in social media from a peer perspective. People with mental health problems are increasingly using social media to share their experiences or seek help. In this paper, I investigate how students' peers recognize, perceive, and support others who describe mental health-related challenges on social media.
I outline the implications of using social media as a support platform and discuss the possibilities for using design to improve peers.
1 Introduction
Here I am not limiting the term mental health to refer only to medically diagnosed illnesses. To examine how peers recognize, perceive, and respond to their fellow students' mental health challenges as revealed on social media, I conducted a survey of 227 peers and then conducted follow-up interviews with 20 of them. Our findings revealed a number of explicit and implicit cues that raised these peers' concerns about others' mental health problems.
I provide a rich description of how peers recognize, perceive, and respond to those who express mental health issues on social media, across a wide range of peer experiences.
2 Background
Individuals experiencing mental health problems often struggle to seek help because they feel ashamed or fear stigma and rejection (Lisa et al., 2006). For example, researchers have identified numerous factors that promote online social support (Choudhury et al., 2014) and proposed computer platforms that would promote online mental health support from peers (Leary et al., 2017). Although online self-disclosure activities have a positive impact on disclosers, a recent study identified certain risks (e.g., self-stigma and reputational damage) of using social technology to find mental health support (Leary et al., 2017).
However, recipients of these disclosures often experienced negative effects (e.g., emotional contagion (Kramer et al., 2014)).
3 Methods
Online Survey
3 Methods. health issues on social media, 2) why they were concerned about the person's mental health, 3) what their relationship was with the person, and 4) what response they gave. I iteratively developed questionnaire items based on existing literature to examine factors that influenced feelings of readiness or unwillingness to respond to such disclosures (Prosser et al., 2015): Proximity (Burke et al., 2016): To what extent you feel that you were close with the person you mentioned above. Responsibility (Fraley et al., 2011): The extent to which you felt you should respond to this person.
Susceptibility (Forgas et al., 2011): How this person's disclosures or other activities have affected your emotions. Helpfulness (Fraley et al., 2011): The extent to which you felt that your response or support would benefit the person.
Semi-Structured Interviews
Rather, our attention was on the characterization of referrals to mental health issues, regardless of the diagnostic conditions of the posters. First, the majority of participating students experienced the identification of others' mental health conditions through social media disclosures. The peers inferred their friends' mental health conditions by observing social media activities (eg, by analyzing the timing and frequency of updates).
Second, despite the high prevalence of these disclosures, more than half of the participants did not respond to the mental health disclosures. How peers discern their friends' mental health problems through social media content and activities. What are the consequences of seeing posts revealing mental health conditions on social media.
Our findings indicate that participants based their perceptions of others' mental health conditions on a variety of cues (see Table 1 ). Many participants used the communicative features of social media to help their friends who appeared to be suffering from mental health problems. The clear detection of negative emotions provided a clear signal that made our participants concerned about a poster's mental health.
According to a previous study (Beverly et al., 1996), anger may be associated with mental health variables. Social media has been used as a mediation tool to recognize others' mental health problems and to help them in various ways. Our participants admitted that it was difficult to talk to a poster about his or her mental health issues, even if they were close to the poster.
Participants were also aware of the possibility that a poster's mental health problems could be exposed or revealed if they commented on or liked a post indicating a problem.
6 Discussion
This makes it difficult to characterize implicit signals of psychological distress for general use. In this study, we could explore how our participants reach out to people who appear to be experiencing mental health issues using social media activities. Another participant reaches out to his friends in a timely manner using social media messages that imply a depressed mood.
Research has suggested that computational algorithms can model behavior of the mental health-challenged population using a variety of signals on social media. I suggest that peers' contextualized sense-making abilities can provide insight to advance computational models for recognizing individuals who appear to be experiencing mental health problems. This research showed that the high visibility of interactions on social media was one of the reasons why peers were reluctant to act.
Many participants reported feeling uncomfortable responding to posts featuring mental health issues due to the public nature of social media. While many participants did not actively respond to social media posts containing mental health problems, some of the committed participants actively used social media to continuously monitor and intervene. I suggest designing opportunity for dedicated peers who actively use social media as a tool for near-real-time detection of risk signals in their friends' posts.
For these dedicated colleagues, I could refine the notification that alerts the social media activity of a person they care for. An alert is then sent to the supporter when a certain social media activity of the friend occurs.
7 Conclusion
귀하의 입장을 구체적으로 기술해 주십시오. 계속해서 반복적으로 올라온 글이었나? 게시물을 처음 읽었을 때와 계속 읽었을 때 반응이나 생각에 차이가 있었나요?
이러한 상황에서 페이스북, 인스타그램 등의 소셜 미디어는 정신 건강 문제가 있는 학생들이 자신의 문제를 공개하거나(자기 공개), 다른 사람으로부터 도움을 구하고 받는(동료 지원, 동료 지원) 장소입니다. 그러나 위와 같은 게시물을 접하고 도움이 될 것으로 예상되는 동료의 경험과 인식에 대해서는 알려진 바가 거의 없습니다. 동료들은 친구를 돕기 위해 어떤 방법으로 소셜 미디어 콘텐츠와 활동을 사용합니까?
설문조사는 친구의 정신건강 문제를 인지한 경험과 반응에 대한 질문으로 구성됐다. 연구 결과를 바탕으로 본 연구는 소셜 미디어에서 동료 지원 기능을 설계할 때 고려해야 할 설계 기회를 제공합니다. 소셜 미디어에서 동료로부터 사회적 지지를 받기 어렵게 만드는 문제를 해결하기 위해 1) 도움의 가시성을 줄이고 2) 사회적 낙인을 줄이는 디자인 기회를 제시했습니다. 기억에 남는 연구를 하도록 격려해 주셨고, 연구 주제를 발굴하고 진행하는 데 앞장설 수 있도록 지도해 주셨습니다.
학기 중에 자신의 주제에 대해 주도적으로 프로젝트를 완성한 학부생들의 작품을 보는 것은 나에게 큰 도전이었습니다. 그리고 다 적지 못한 반 친구들에게도 진심으로 감사드립니다. 마지막으로, 짧은 시간 동안 저를 믿고 함께 해준 은영이에게 깊은 감사의 말씀을 전하고 싶습니다.
본 연구는 2017년 산업통상자원부의 지원을 받아 한국디자인진흥원의 지원을 받아 수행되었습니다.
