Associations Between Social Support and Social Media Use Among Young Adult Cisgender MSM and Transgender Women Living With HIV

Abstract

Social media platforms offer the opportunity to develop online social networks. Use of these platforms has been particularly attractive to younger sexual and gender minority individuals as well as those living with HIV. This cross-sectional study examined the perceived level of social support and associations with social media use among youth and young adult cisgender men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender (trans) women living with HIV and examined these associations by gender identity. The study drew from baseline data collected from 612 cisgender MSM and 162 trans women enrolling in one of 10 demonstration sites that were part of a Health Resources and Services Administration Special Projects of National Significance initiative. The individual projects were designed to evaluate the potential for social media/mobile technology–based interventions to improve retention in care and HIV health outcomes. The data used in this study came from baseline surveys completed when participants enrolled in a site between October 2016 and May 2018. Results demonstrated that a significantly greater proportion of MSM than trans women participants reported the use of social media platforms (e.g., Facebook: MSM = 86%, trans women = 62%; Instagram: MSM = 65%, trans women = 35%). Furthermore, increased social media use improved perceptions of social support only among MSM participants (direct adjusted OR = 1.49) and not trans women participants (gender identity interaction term adjusted OR = 0.64). These results revealed that MSM participants perceived greater social benefit from the use of social media platforms than trans women, which could be a result of generalized online transphobia experienced by trans women. More nuanced data on various social media platforms, that is, anonymous versus profile-based, and group differences, are needed to better understand how social media platforms can be best utilized to optimize health care outcomes among sexual and gender minority youth and young adults living with HIV.

Unmasking the bright–dark duality of social media use on psychological well-being: a large-scale longitudinal study

“…late-night use) that causes mental reactions, such as social media addiction (Zolkepli et al, 2021) and social media fatigue (Masood et al, 2021;Teng et al, 2022;Xiao and Mou, 2019), which further lead to psychological reactions (Chuang and Liao, 2021;Dhir et al, 2018;Zolkepli et al, 2021) or behavioral responses (Guo et al, 2020;Teng et al, 2022;. In addition, the current study has identified perceived social support as one of the primary motivations (Gerke et al, 2020;Subramanian, 2017) and typically positive outcomes of social media use (Oh and Syn, 2015;Pang, 2020;Selkie et al, 2020). In this vein, we employ the SSO model in social media research to pinpoint the process of how personal experience of social media use shapes psychological outcome.…”

“…One research stream highlights the bright side of social media use. As a hub of communities for online interactions, social media intentionally helps individuals bridge geographic and temporal gaps and explicitly meets users' needs for social communication and interpersonal connection (Gerke et al, 2020;Subramanian, 2017). As such, "increased social support would seem to be an element sine qua non of the social media experience" (Gerke et al, 2020, p. 711).…”

The Incidence of Breaking-Up With Women Engenders Menhaving Sex With Men

“…African-American and Latino MSM use social networking technology to find and meet sexual partners, and those who use this technology are more likely to engage in risky behavior (Young, Szekeres, & Coates, 2013). The proportion of MSM was significantly larger in the use of social media (Gerke et al, 2020). MSM uses social media and dating apps for communication or finding new partners (Kesten et al, 2019).…”

Psychological wellbeing and avoidance strategies as moderators between excessive social media use and academic performance among Indian college students

“…Earlier researchers reported that individuals’ widespread use of social media has both a bright side and a dark side (Ali et al , 2023; Gao et al , 2018; Gong et al , 2020; Lin et al , 2023; Shan et al , 2021; Yang et al , 2022). The bright side is seen in terms of building social capital and psychological well-being (Zhang and Jung, 2022), perceived social support and decreased loneliness (Choi and Noh, 2020; Gerke et al , 2020; Zhang et al , 2021), life satisfaction (Raza et al , 2020a) and happiness (Chae, 2018). The dark side represents the ill effects of use of social media seen in terms of technostress and exhaustion (Homaid, 2022; Loh et al , 2022; Yue et al , 2022), employee mental health (Nayak and Budhwar, 2022), workplace incivility (Tandon et al , 2022), nomophobia (Lin et al , 2021), anxiety (Boursier et al , 2020; Dhir et al , 2018) and information overload (Sasaki et al , 2015).…”