I am thrilled to share new, national survey data on the digital health landscape.
Thanks to funding and guidance from Hopelab and the Well Being Trust, Vicky Rideout and I measured how teens and young adults (14- to 22-year-olds) pursue health and well-being using the tools at their disposal — apps, peer advice, online communications with clinicians, and much more. Our particular focus was the complex relationship between social media and depression.
Key findings based on the full sample of 14- to 22-year-olds:
- 87% of all teens and young adults (TYAs) say they have gone online for health information. The top five topics searched are fitness (63%), nutrition (52%), stress (44%), anxiety (42%), and depression (39%).
- 64% of all TYAs say they have used mobile apps related to health, including for fitness, sleep, meditation, and medication reminders.
- The majority (61%) say they have read, listened to, or watched other people share about their health experiences online, whether in podcasts, TED talks, or YouTube videos.
- About four in ten (39%) say they have gone online to try to find people with health conditions similar to their own, using methods such as participating in online forums or closed social media groups on specific issues, doing hashtag searches on social media, or following people with similar health conditions.
- One third (33%) of all TYAs have successfully connected with health peers online, and 91% of them say the experience was helpful.
- One in five (20%) TYAs report having connected with health providers online, through tools like online messaging, apps, texting, and video chat.
Key findings looked at through the filter of emotional well-being:
- Respondents who reported moderate to severe symptoms of depression were nearly twice as likely as those with no symptoms to say that social media helps connect them to useful support and advice when they feel depressed, stressed or anxious (25% vs. 13%).
- Teens and young adults are more likely to report receiving positive than negative feedback from others on social media: 32% say they “often” get positive comments from others compared to just 3% who say they “often” get negative comments.
- Teenage girls and young women are more likely than males their age to go online for information about anxiety (55% vs. 29% of males) or depression (49% vs. 27% of males).
- Three out of four LGBTQ youth (76%) have looked online for information about depression, compared to 32% of straight youth; 75% of LGBTQ youth have looked for information about anxiety, compared to 36% of their straight peers; and 68% of LGBTQ youth have looked for information on stress, compared to 40% of straight youth.
We included ample opportunities for respondents to tell us, in their own words, what they think. That’s where you can hear the heartbeat of this research project. It was a moving experience for Vicky and I to read the hundreds of short, personal essays and choose just a fraction to feature in the report. I think young people’s voices haven’t been heard enough in the public conversation about how they use social media & digital health tools. As we wrote in the report, “It is almost as if they were waiting for someone to ask; now it is our turn to listen.”
Here is a tiny sample of the 500+ answers to one question: “Please give us an example of a time you went online to try to find other people with health concerns similar to yours. What was the situation? How did it turn out?”
- I have type 1 diabetes and tried to find a group of teenager type 1’s on Facebook. I did. It was cool. Made some friends. – 14-year-old White male
- I found a very good friend in another country that had the same condition as I did, and it was truly inspiring to have the freedom to tell them about it and likewise them to me! – 21-year-old Latino male
- I wanted to know something about birth control and people had the same questions and it helped me know that I wasn’t alone. – 21-year-old Latina female
- My mom was making me get the hepatitis A vaccine and [another] one for HPV and I didn’t know what the shots were for, and I was too scared to ask the nurse about it, especially after she started talking about gay sex & warts, so I went online to [a medical website] and tried to research it myself. It’s still hard to do that when you don’t what the words mean. I finally asked my mom & she sat down with me, and we got online and did the pros & cons. I felt better after cause she was explaining what I didn’t understand. – 14-year-old White female
On a personal note, going back to research after a 5-year hiatus was like putting on my old hiking boots and finding that I still had a taste for the trail. Quiet, often solitary, but moving forward every day toward a goal.
I hope people dig into the report, debate the meaning of the findings, and continue the conversation — here and elsewhere. If you have immediate reactions to what I’ve shared, please comment below. I can’t wait to learn along with you all about the challenges and opportunities of social media, health, & emotional well-being.
Related articles:
- How Healthcare Leaders Can Fuel Care for the Next Generation
- Peer health advice among teens and young adults
- Teens and young adults: In their own words
I am proud to feature a photo by my niece Meghan Fox, a fantastic photographer based in St. Louis, MO (and who happens to be in the demographic group we studied).
Thanks for this. I’m collecting similar data now among low-income patients. Have you made your instrument public? Would love to include prompts for things we haven’t thought of
Thanks! Here is a link to the topline (note: PDF) which contains all the questions.
If you can, leave space for people to tell you what they do and think in their own words. We learned as much or more from the open-end questions as from the quantitative ones.
And please stay in touch! I’d love to hear more about what you’re exploring and finding.
So interesting to read…especially the LGBTQ YTAs. Great insight!
Yes, it is heartbreaking to see the emotional well-being gap — hopeful that advocates can use the data to shake free more funding for outreach & support.
Ramin, circling back on your comment since I’ve now had a moment to consider the implications of our findings for your & others’ work related to communication between clinicians and patients.
You have found that 91% of messages sent by patients through their Healthvana account are on their mobile phone.
I want to unpack the national data that I’m familiar with on mobile phones & clinical communication (and I’d ask for others to chime in if you know of other data sources):
Pew Research:
– 95% of U.S. adults have a cellphone. 77% of U.S adults own a smartphone.
– 95% of U.S. teens either have a smartphone or access to one. (Adults: 2018; teens: 2018)
Hopelab/Well Being Trust, 2018: Twenty percent of 14- to 22-year-old respondents say they have connected with a health provider online: 10% through online messaging, 8% through texting, 5% through an app, and 4% through video chat.
– Nearly three in ten (28%) young adults (18-22 year-olds) say they have connected to health providers online, compared to 10% of teens (14-17 year-olds).
– When looking at the full sample of 14- to 22-year-olds, we see a gender split: 24% of females have connected with a clinician online, compared with 16% of males in this age group.
– Black youth are more likely to say they have connected to a health provider online (34%, compared to 20% of Whites and 17% of Latinos in this age group).
– There are no differences between cisgender/straight and LGBTQ youth in terms of their reported use of online resources to connect with health providers.
So this is what teens and young adults are doing with the services available to them, but think about what they’d potentially do if they had access to more options for communicating using their mobile phones.
Thank you for the additional insight! I’ll use those data with our current and potential customers because they always want evidence/data to back up their hunches…which is everyone (not only YTAs) are glued to their phones.
Love this article by Lois Collins in the Deseret News:
It’s not all bad when young people seek advice on social media. Here’s why
She talked with me and Ben Miller, chief strategist at Well Being Trust. He gets the kicker quote, which I think is spot-on:
He said that, too often, people suffering mentally are given casual, hurtful advice. “We would never tell someone, ‘Just work harder and your hypertension will go away.’ Or just, ‘Come on, smile more and you’ll lose weight.’ But we do that all the time for mental health.”
This is a fascinating report with so many great areas to dig into!! Thank you for sharing the great work!
I love that you focused on providing open text opportunities to hear perspectives and experiences straight from teens & young adults. Even in the four responses you provided, it’s clear that these groups are using online spaces to connect with communities that have the same health conditions as them and learn directly about their health, the same as many adults! To me the last response also highlighted the continued need for context — just because all the information about a condition is out on the internet, doesn’t mean you can understand it alone. Parents, peers, physicians, and many others are so important in helping teens & young adults (or any of us!) understand information about our health.
Thanks, Taylor! I plan to share more quotes here in the coming days because each one is a person’s story & perspective. We have a lot to learn from the quant AND the qualitative data. So glad you find it useful.
Much more “#hcsm” among the younger set than I would have guessed! That intially sounds excellent, but did the research suggest anything about the state of health literacy in the sources they tend to follow and the information they tend to share?
Example: Are “meta” messages on topics such overuse of antibiotics making it across the generation gap?
Good luck with all of it, Susannah.
Great question, but no, we don’t have measures for health literacy in the survey. I will dig into the data to see if I discern any insights on this topic, though — thanks for the idea!
As an aside, I am planning to blog about various aspects of our findings in more depth in the coming weeks — and I do take requests, so if you’re reading this and have a burning curiosity about something, please post a comment!
Fantastic work! So often we hear about an association between moderate/high social media use and higher levels of depression/anxiety. I think many have initially assumed that social media use causes mental health problems. I suspect it is just as likely that those who are battling mental health challenges, particularly TYA, feel safer looking for information/support online amongst peers than traditional clinical settings and your data suggest that this may be the case. So many exciting possibilities for supporting TYA through digital tech!
“Respondents who reported moderate to severe symptoms of depression were nearly twice as likely as those with no symptoms to say that social media helps connect them to useful support and advice when they feel depressed, stressed or anxious (25% vs. 13%).”
Thanks! We’re excited about shedding light on this area, opening up possibilities for further research.