ArticleJournal of medical Internet research2021
Effects of Web-Based Social Connectedness on Older Adults' Depressive Symptoms: A Two-Wave Cross-Lagged Panel Study.
Article in Journal of medical Internet research, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 33 citations in OpenAlex.
- What can internet users' behaviours reveal about the mental health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic? A systematic review.Public health · 2021Pooled it
- Determinants of social health in later life: the roles of family integration, social participation, and psychosocial well-being.Frontiers in sociology · 2026Article
- Bidirectional associations among handgrip strength, gait speed, and cognitive function in older adults: a longitudinal study in rural China.BMC geriatrics · 2025Article
- Longitudinal associations between BMI, ideal-actual BMI gap, and body shape concern among young Chinese females.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- The impact of digital technology on health inequality: evidence from China.BMC health services research · 2024Article
- A Web-Based Peer Support Network to Help Care Partners of People With Serious Illness: Co-Design Study.JMIR human factors · 2024Article
- Article
- Exploring the relationship between older adults' online health information seeking, negative emotions and prevention behaviors in the pandemic context: a two-wave longitudinal study.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- Exploring the Impact of Covid-19-Related Perceptions on Psychological Distress and Quality of Life in an International Gastrointestinal Cohort Over Time Guided by the Common Sense Model.Journal of clinical psychology in medical settings · 2023Article
- The Temporal Relationship between Depressive Symptoms and Loneliness: The Moderating Role of Self-Compassion.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Changes in the health status and health-related quality of life of community-dwelling older adults living alone: one-year follow-up from a cohort study.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Living with cystic fibrosis during the COVID-19 pandemic: a social connectedness perspective.International journal of qualitative studies on health and well-being · 2022Article
- Article
- The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on well-being of seniors attending online programs at University of the Third Age: a follow-up study.Psychogeriatrics : the official journal of the Japanese Psychogeriatric Society · 2022Article
- Longitudinal assessment of the common sense model before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: A large coeliac disease cohort study.Journal of psychosomatic research · 2022Article
- Evaluating Predictors of Participation in Telephone-Based Social-Connectedness Interventions for Older Adults: A Dual Machine-Learning and Regression Approach.Gerontology & geriatric medicineArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundDepressive symptoms are the most prevalent mental health concern among older adults (possibly heightened during the COVID-19 pandemic), which raises questions about how such symptoms can be lowered in this population. Existing research shows that offline social connectedness is a protective factor against depression in older adults; however, it is unknown whether web-based social connectedness can have similar effects.
objectiveThis study investigates whether social connectedness on a support website protects older adults against depressive symptoms over the course of a year, above and beyond the protective effect of offline social connectedness. The secondary aim is to determine whether older adults with increased depressive symptoms are more likely to engage in social connectedness on this website. Thus, we examine depressive symptoms as both an outcome and predictor of web-based social connectedness to fully understand the chain of causality among these variables. Finally, we compare web-based social connectedness with offline social connectedness in their ability to lower depressive symptoms among older adults.
methodsA total of 197 adults aged 65 years or older were given access to a social support website, where they were able to communicate with each other via a discussion forum for a year. Participants' social connectedness on the web-based platform, conceptualized as message production and consumption, was measured using behavioral log data as the number of messages participants wrote and read, respectively, during the first 6 months (t
resultsAfter controlling for the effect of offline support networks at t
conclusionsThe more messages older adults read on the web-based forum for the first 6 months of the study, the less depressed they felt at the 1-year follow-up, above and beyond the availability of offline support networks at baseline. This pinpoints the substantial potential of web-based communication to combat depressive symptoms in this vulnerable population. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): RR2-10.1186/s13063-015-0713-2.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.