Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Apr 28, 2020
Date Accepted: Sep 23, 2020
Date Submitted to PubMed: Oct 2, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Social Media Use, Health Literacy, and Preventive Behaviors in COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Study on Chinese Netizens
ABSTRACT
Background:
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has quickly spread around the world and led to a novel pandemic since its outbreak from December 2019. Social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram etc.) had been recognized as the important strategies for health-promoting practice in public health. While social media use is widespread in the general population, but little is known about the effect of social media use on health promotion during pandemic outbreak.
Objective:
This study aimed to explore whether and how social media use and health literacy predicted public preventive behaviors during COVID-19 outbreak in Chinese contexts.
Methods:
A national online cross-sectional survey was conducted by proportionate probability sampling method among Chinese netizens in February 2020. Two hierarchical multiple regression models were executed to explore the underlying mechanism of the relationship among all variables.
Results:
Among the 802 participants, 51.9% (N = 416) were male, average age was 32.65 years old. High education (above bachelor, N = 624, 77.7%), high-income (above ￥5,000, N = 525, 65.3%), “Married “(N = 496, 61.8%) and “Good health” (N = 486, 60.6%) were the significant characteristics of the participants. The average time of social use (M = 2.34, SD = 1.12) was about 2-3 hours per day, public social media and aggravated social media were the most used media type. Respondents had high level of disease knowledge (M = 8.15, SD = 1.43), and eHealth literacy (M = 3.79, SD = .59). Frequency of social media use (β = .04, t = 5.97, p＜.001), disease knowledge (β = 5.97, t = 3.42, p＜.001), and eHealth literacy (β = .19, t = 7.69, p＜.001) significantly and positively predicted preventive behaviors, respectively. eHealth literacy (β = .018, t = 2.051, p ＜ .05) did positively and significantly moderate the relationship between frequency of SM use and preventive behaviors, disease knowledge (β = -.01, t = -1.07, p＞ .05) negatively moderated above relationship, but not significantly. Professional SM (β = .041, t = 3.005, p ＜ .01), public SM (β = .077, t = 4.103, p ＜ .001) and aggregated SM (β =.092, t =6.433, p ＜.001) positively predicted preventive behaviors, while “official SM” (β = .013, t = 1.012, p ＞ .05) was excluded.
Conclusions:
This article was an original research to explore the relationship among one’s SM use, health literacy and preventive behaviors during COVID-19 outbreak in China. We found that social media use really influenced individual’s preventive behaviors and aggregated SM deserved attention in future. Health literacy was essential to health promotion in pandemic outbreak. These results not only enriched the theoretical paradigm of public health management and health communication, but also had practical implications in pandemic control both for China and other countries.
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