Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Dermatology
Date Submitted: Feb 22, 2020
Date Accepted: Nov 11, 2020
From Snaps to Sun: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Exploratory Study of Young Women’s Social Media Use, Emotions, and Sun Exposure
ABSTRACT
Background:
Research has pointed to a connection between social media use, emotions and tanning behaviors. However, less is known about the role specific emotions may play in influencing social media use, and how emotions and social media use may each be associated with outdoor tanning.
Objective:
We wanted to examine the connection between emotions, social media use, and outdoor tanning behaviors among young women, a group particularly important for skin cancer prevention efforts.
Methods:
We used ecological momentary assessment to collect data from 197 women ages 18-25 three times a day for seven days in July 2018. We collected data from women in two states.
Results:
We found that boredom was associated with increased time spent on social media and that increased time spent with social media was associated with increased time outdoors without sun protection.
Conclusions:
Our results highlight that social media may be a particularly important channel for skin cancer prevention efforts targeting young women, as more social media use was associated with increased time spent outdoors with skin exposed. Researchers should consider the role of emotions in motivating social media use and subsequent tanning behaviors. Additionally, as boredom was associated with social media use, intervention developers would benefit from developing digital and social media interventions that entertain as well as educate.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.