JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Depressive symptoms are the most prevalent mental health concern (possibly heightened during the COVID-19 pandemic) among older adults, raising questions of how they can be lowered in this population. Existing research shows that offline social connectedness is a protective factor against older adults’ depression, but it is unknown whether online social connectedness can have similar effects.

Objective:

This paper investigates whether online 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. A second objective is to determine whether older adults with increased depressive symptoms are more likely to engage in online social connectedness on this website. Thus, we examine depressive symptoms as both an outcome and predictor of online social connectedness, in order to fully investigate the chain of causality among these variables. Finally, we compare online with offline social connectedness in their ability to lower depressive symptoms among older adults.

Methods:

A total of 197 adults aged 65 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 online 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 six months (t1) and the following six months (t2). Participants self-reported their offline social connectedness as the number of people in their support networks, and their depressive symptoms using the PHQ-8 questionnaire, both at baseline (t1) and the 12-month follow-up (t2). To ascertain the flow of causality between these variables, we employed a cross-lagged panel design, in which all variables were measured at t1 and t2.

Results:

After controlling for the effect of offline support networks at t1, online message consumption at t1 decreased older adults’ depressive symptoms at t2 (b = -.106, P = .015), but online message production at t1 did not impact t2 depressive symptoms (b = .121, P = .344). Online message consumption showed larger effects (b = -.106, P = .015) than offline support networks (b = -.077, P = .033) in reducing older adults’ depressive symptoms over time. Higher baseline depressive symptoms did not predict increased online message consumption (b = .120, P = .357) or production (b = .020, P = .430) over time.

Conclusions:

The more messages older adults read on the online forum for the first six months of the study, the less depressed they felt at the one-year follow-up, above and beyond the availability of offline support networks at baseline. This suggests substantial potential of online communication to benefit this vulnerable population.