BUFFALO, N.Y. – Inflammation is the body’s response to injury or infection, but it’s also a factor that leads people to use social media, according to a new study by communication researchers at the University at Buffalo.
Results from three studies involving more than 1,800 participants published in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity showed increased levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), which the liver produces in response to inflammation in the body. has shown that it has the potential to promote sociability. Media use among middle-aged adults and college students.
“It appears that inflammation not only increases social media use, but our results also suggest that inflammation increases the use of social media specifically to interact with other users, such as direct messaging and posting to people’s pages. Interestingly, inflammation did not lead people to use social media for other purposes, such as entertainment, such as watching funny videos. ,” said Dr. David Lee, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication in the UB College of Arts and Sciences, who conducted the study for the first time. author.
“To our knowledge, this is the first evidence of the role of the immune system as a potential antecedent of social media use.”
Social media platforms attract billions of users around the world, raising questions about their potential impact on physical and mental health. But Lee and his co-authors are asking a more fundamental question. “What attracts people to use social media in the first place?”
But could inflammation be the cause? This association is not as unlikely as it may at first seem.
Although people commonly attribute psychological reasons such as boredom and loneliness to social media use, a growing body of research suggests that experimentally increasing inflammation promotes socially engaged behaviors. So Lee wondered to what extent normal circulating levels of downstream biomarkers of systemic inflammation, such as CRP, influence his social media use.
If inflammation does indeed increase prosocial motivation, such conditions should lead people to turn to social media as a means to meet their social needs.
In the current paper, the first study used an existing dataset of middle-aged adults who filled out research questionnaires and provided blood samples that researchers analyzed for CRP. The authors collected their own data for the second and third studies using similar methods with college students.
“Inflammation is usually followed by disease-related behaviors and symptoms that help the body heal,” says Lee, an expert on the effects of social media use. “Humans are social creatures, and when we are sick or injured, it may be adaptive to be close to others who can provide social support and care.”
Understanding and identifying when and why people use social media can provide intervention strategies that teach people when to seek connection and social support or strengthen offline relationships. can.
“If social media use is driven by a desire to connect with others, we can teach people to use social media for that purpose,” he says.
The findings also shed light on how to effectively manage social media use.
“For some people, the relationship between social media use and inflammation is a positive feedback loop, where more social media use leads to more inflammation, and more inflammation leads to more social media use. “It’s possible,” he says.
Lee explores how inflammation affects social behavior online and offline, and whether the link between inflammation and social media use differs in certain populations, such as teenage girls or people with low self-esteem. We plan to continue working with our collaborators to gain more insight into whether this is the case. Respect.
“Following this line of research allows us to further our understanding of the potential connections between the body and everyday social behavior,” he says.
Lee’s research team included Tao Jiang, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University, Jennifer Crocker, Ph.D., professor emeritus of psychology at Ohio State University, and Baldwin Wei, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at Ohio State University.