Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 53 (2020) 101774

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Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services

journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jretconser

Social media marketing: Who is watching the watchers?

Jenna Jacobson a, *, Anatoliy Gruzd b, A.Ángel Hernández-García c
a
Ryerson University, Ted Rogers School of Retail Management, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5B 2K3, Canada
b
Ryerson University, Ted Rogers School of Management, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5B 2K3, Canada
c
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Department of Organization Engineering, Business Administration and Statistics, Av. Complutense, 30, Madrid, 28040, Spain

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The ready access to and availability of social media has opened up a wealth of data that marketers are leveraging
Digital marketing for strategic insight and digital marketing. Yet there is a lack of professional norms regarding the use of social
Ethics media in marketing and a gap in understanding consumers’ comfort with marketers’ use of their social media
Social media
data. This study analyzes a census-balanced sample of online adults (n = 751) to identify consumers’ perceptions
Consumer trust
Privacy
of using social media data for marketing purposes. The research finds that consumers’ perceived risks and
benefits of using social media have a relationship with their comfort with marketers using their publicly available
social media data. The research extends the applicability of communication privacy management theory to social
media and introduces marketing comfort—a new construct of high importance for future marketing research.
Marketing comfort refers to an individual’s comfort with the use of information posted publicly on social media
for targeted advertising, customer relations, and opinion mining. In the context of the construct development, we
find that targeted advertising is the strongest contributing component to marketing comfort, relative to the other
two dimensions: opinion mining and customer relations. By understanding what drives consumer comfort with
this emerging marketing practice, the research proposes strategies for marketers that can support and mitigate
consumers’ concerns so that consumers can maintain trust in marketers’ digital practices.

1. Introduction
Just as the use of social media is changing how people live (Quan-­
Haase and Young, 2010), learn (Gruzd et al., 2016), and connect with
one another (van Dijck, 2012), fundamental shifts are also taking place
within businesses with the introduction and use of social media. Con­
sumers are using social media to generate information and share their
experiences with their friends, companies, and broader online commu­
nities via posts, tweets, shares, likes, and reviews (Bailey et al., 2018;
Dimitriu and Guesalaga, 2017; Martín-Consuegra et al., 2018). Busi­
nesses are taking notice as they adopt strategies and tools to engage in
social media listening (Misirlis and Vlachopoulou, 2018; Schweidel and
Moe, 2014). From a design retailer combining social media and pre­
dictive analytics to gather sentiment on potential new products (Ama­
to-McCoy, 2018) to travel companies mining unstructured social media
data to present users with personalized offers (Western Digital, 2018),
marketers are particularly interested in understanding what their cus­
tomers and the public are saying about their business (Tuten and Solo­
mon, 2017).
While social media listening has been shown to be extremely
valuable for businesses to better understand what their customers and
the public are saying about their products or services (Lee, 2018; Pan­
iagua and Sapena, 2014), not all consumers might be comfortable with
such practices (Akar and Topçu, 2011; Dubois et al., 2018). And if they
are not comfortable with what and how marketers use social media data,
consumers may develop negative attitudes, which may in turn impact
consumers’ purchasing intention and lead to a loss of trust and a
damaged relationship between the consumer and the company (Adjei
et al., 2010; Arnold, 2018; Goldfarb and Tucker, 2013). For example,
when a UK-based insurance company decided to rely on Facebook posts
to price car insurance, it created a backlash in the form of negative
publicity about the company and their data practice (Ruddick, 2016). In
addition, recent data breaches at Facebook and the platform’s secretive
data sharing arrangements with other tech giants (Dance et al., 2018;
Kanter, 2018) have heightened people’s privacy concerns and increased
their awareness of who might be accessing their data and for what
purposes (Cochrane, 2018; DMA, 2018a, 2018b). These recent cases
highlight the need for developing a more granular understanding of
consumers’ attitudes towards marketers’ use of their social media data.
Prior research has primarily focused on the organizational environment

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: jenna.jacobson@ryerson.ca (J. Jacobson).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2019.03.001
Received 15 September 2018; Received in revised form 4 March 2019; Accepted 4 March 2019
Available online 20 March 2019
0969-6989/© 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
J. Jacobson et al.
and personal characteristics of marketers or decision makers in mar­
keting professions (Singhapakdi et al., 1996). While the perspective of
marketers is important to understand the professional practices, there is
little knowledge about the public’s attitudes towards marketers using
their social media data, which we seek to address in this study.
A unique aspect of our work is that we study people’s attitudes to­
wards the use of publicly accessible social media data. While data
breaches (like in the cases mentioned above) do happen, typically
marketers would not have direct access to users’ data that is privately
shared with a selected group of friends or shared in members-only online
groups—at least, not without users’ consent. But the situation is
different when it comes to user-generated content shared publicly on
social media, such as a public post on Twitter or a comment in a public
Facebook page. Because of their business models, most major social
media platforms encourage data use for marketing purposes through
well-developed APIs—data sharing protocols and an ecosystem of third-
party applications that rely on APIs to offer business intelligence ser­
vices. Furthermore, few jurisdictions around the world have regulations
in place to limit or make these data mining practices more trans­
parent—with some exceptions like the General Data Protection Regu­
lation in the European Union. We argue that even if data access and use
is possible and legal, marketing professionals have ethical re­
sponsibilities that extend beyond the legal requirements.
In this context, this study seeks to help marketing professionals
develop strong professional principles and guidelines while still being
able to benefit from many opportunities that social media has to offer to
both sides: consumers and businesses. We achieve this goal by exam­
ining relationships between consumers’ information privacy concerns,
social media use gratifications, and self-disclosure practices with their
comfort with marketers using their social media data. By understanding
what drives consumers’ comfort with these emerging data practices, we
propose strategies for marketers that can support and mitigate con­
sumers’ discomfort with social media data use. Beyond the practical
reasons, the research is also important because of the evolving mar­
keting ethics. While marketers have always had to grapple with various
ethical considerations in their practices, the widespread adoption and
use of the internet has introduced new challenges for implementing
marketing ethics (Laczniak and Murphy, 2006). The research addresses
the link between marketing ethics and consumer comfort with emergent
marketing practices by introducing a new construct: marketing comfort.
As a theoretical lens, the research is guided by communication privacy
management. While communication privacy management (CPM) theory
has been applied to marketing ethics, we extend CPM and assess its
applicability in the context of publicly available social media data.
In the following, we outline the: (1) relevant literature on social
media marketing and ethics in marketing, (2) use of Petronio’s
communication privacy management theory to guide the research and
the three hypotheses, (3) methods and data analysis, (4) results of the
data analysis, (5) discussion, and (6) conclusions including the limita­
tions and implications of the research.
2. Literature review
2.1. Social media marketing
Social media marketing is used across sectors and refers to “the
utilization of social media technologies, channels, and software to
create, communicate, deliver, and exchange offerings that have value
for an organization’s stakeholders” (Tuten and Solomon, 2017, p. 18). In
a systematic review of the social media literature, Kapoor et al. (2018)
find that social media has been widely adopted as a marketing medium.
In the private sector, social media is often used as a communication tool
to promote and sell products and services; in the public sector, social
media is often used to share information and encourage user engage­
ment (Royle and Laing, 2014; Gruzd et al., 2018a). Beyond being
another medium to communicate with one’s audience, social media
2
Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 53 (2020) 101774
affords the opportunity for social and professional relationships to be
built, sustained, and strengthened with friends, family, and even busi­
nesses. Marketers employ relationship marketing strategies to build
long-term relations that are mutually satisfying with key parties,
including customers (Kang and Kim, 2017; Murphy et al., 2007; Kamboj
et al., 2018; for a systematic literature review of social media marketing
see: Alalwan et al., 2017; Misirlis and Vlachopoulou, 2018; Felix et al.,
2017).
Research has analyzed the effectiveness of social media marketing
(Dwivedi et al., 2015; Kapoor et al., 2018; Lee and Hong, 2016) and
behavioural attitudes towards viral marketing (Citton, 2017; Eppler and
Mengis, 2004) and advertising (Alalwan, 2018; Lee and Hong, 2016;
Shareef et al., 2018, 2019). Factors such as interactivity (Jiang et al.,
2010), perceived relevance (Jung, 2017), perceived usefulness (Chang
et al., 2015), and organizational reputation (Boateng and Okoe, 2015)
have been found to impact consumers’ attitudes towards social media
marketing. Put simply, Alalwan (2018) explains, “customers who find
social media advertising beneficial and more advantageous are more
likely to be willing to purchase the targeted products of these ads” (p.
73).
Marketers are using publicly available social media data for three
common functions: opinion mining, targeted advertising, and customer
relations. First, marketers engage in opinion mining, which involves
leveraging the plethora of social media data to uncover knowledge, in­
sights, and patterns derived from structured and unstructured data (He
et al., 2013). Opinion mining may also involve tracking mentions or
particular phrases (Tuten and Solomon, 2017). Marketers then extract
actionable patterns that can be used to reach their strategic business
goals and provide a competitive edge in the marketplace (Gundecha and
Liu, 2012).
Second, the use of social media in marketing has contributed to the
individualization of marketing whereby organizations can communi­
cate, collect data, and provide personalized responses and solutions for
customers (Royle and Laing, 2014; Simmons, 2008). Marketers can
therefore leverage social media to craft personalized messages and offers
for target audiences (Sterne, 2010). Personalized offers may deliver five
to eight times the return on investment (ROI) on marketing expenditure
and can increase sales by more than 10% (Cochrane, 2018).
Third, developing strong relationships with customers is the main
objective of marketing programs (Soler-Labajos and Jimenez-Zarco,
2016) and customer relations are improved using social media (Ainin
et al., 2015). As a tool for customer relations, social media is used to
attract customers with user-generated content, engage customers using
online two-way social interactions, and retain customers through
building relationships with other members (Wang and Fesenmaier,
2004). A key part of effective customer relations is delivering pertinent
information at the correct time and forming a personalized connection
with the customer (Peppers and Rogers, 2017). Traditional customer
relationship management (CRM) databases include personal informa­
tion about the customers and are now being augmented with social CRM
derived from social media data to obtain more detailed personal infor­
mation (Soler-Labajos and Jimenez-Zarco, 2016). Businesses can add
value to the customer experience by better understanding the wants and
needs of the customer.
In this study we focus on three common functions of using social
media data for marketing: (1) extracting insights via opinion mining, (2)
delivering information via targeted advertising, and (3) communicating
via customer relations with new or existing customers (Boerman et al.,
2017; Liu et al., 2017; Malthouse and Li, 2017; Sheng et al., 2018). These
functions speak to the three different informational exchanges: pulling
(i.e. opinion mining), pushing (i.e. targeted advertising), and
exchanging (i.e. customer relations). Opinion mining involves natural
language processing to identify the audience’s overall mood about a
particular topic; for example, marketers can use opinion mining to
determine the success of a marketing campaign as well as what is or is
not working well for customers (Vinodhini and Chandrasekaran, 2012).
J. Jacobson et al.
Targeted advertising refers to the segmentation of the population into
subgroups based on user preferences and then the delivery of adver­
tisements for products and services that the subgroup will find desirable
(Yang et al., 2006); marketers use social media as the data source to
algorithmically group users and deliver more personalized advertise­
ments. Finally, customer relations refer to the relationship an organiza­
tion has with its customers and is hailed “the new marketing” due to the
customer’s ability to share their issues on social media (Kietzmann,
2011); marketers can then use social media to build and foster re­
lationships with consumers.
In the internet era, the possibility of collecting massive amounts of
personal consumer data has caused a shift in consumers’ privacy con­
cerns (Goldfarb and Tucker, 2013), which has critical implications for
evaluating the ethical practices in marketing, as discussed in the
following section.
2.2. Ethics in marketing
Social media is celebrated as giving people the opportunity to ex­
press themselves and their ideas via user-generated content (van Dijck,
2009), yet many people express privacy concerns with the use of their
social media data by third parties (Acquisti and Gross, 2006; Gruzd and
Hernandez-Garcia, 2018; Gruzd et al., 2018b; Marwick and Hargittai,
2018). In the current marketing communities, there are scholarly de­
bates surrounding ethics, including normative ethics (what should be),
positive ethics (what is or could be), consumer ethics (what moral rules
guide consumers), and virtue ethics (what is ethical) approach (Hunt
and Vitell, 1986, 2006; Murphy et al., 2007; Vitell, 2003). Unlike
traditional marketing, which involves a one-way dissemination of in­
formation, the use of the internet affords two-way communication
thatposes different ethical and privacy considerations for marketers
(Malhotra et al., 2004). Even with publicly available social media data,
individuals may still have expectations of privacy (Gruzd and
Hernandez-Garcia, 2018; Gruzd et al., 2018b). Serious privacy and
ethical considerations are raised when organizations seek to capitalize
on the wealth of data from social media and the internet more broadly
(Malhotra et al., 2004; Ward, 2018).
Previous research has sought to explore how marketers come to
make ethical decisions based on personal characteristics (Singhapakdi
et al., 1996). Hunt and Vittell (1986) contend that people respond
differently to ethical questions or situations because of their ethical
sensitivity. Sparks and Hunt (1998) find that when marketing pro­
fessionals are placed in a decision-making situation, many marketers
will fail to recognize the ethical issues, which is even more complicated
as marketers explore opportunities to leverage social media data.
Regarding social media marketing, Barger et al. (2016) argue that there
is fragmentation in the discipline and call for further research to un­
derstand how consumer engagement can be embraced for the benefit of
consumers and companies.
While understanding the decision-making process of marketing
professionals provides insight into what “is” the current state of social
media marketing, it does not contribute to an understanding of what
marketing ethics of using social media data “ought” to be. As Malhotra
and Miller (1998) state, “Remembering that the consumer is an essential
part of the marketing process cannot be ignored, it seems that more
energy should be devoted towards targeting efforts to the consumer
(client, respondents, and public) perspective of ethical dilemmas in
marketing research, rather than solely through the eyes of the business
(researcher)” (p. 271). Thus, understanding the consumer perspective
on marketers’ use of social media data needs to be considered.
3. Theoretical framework and hypotheses
With the focus on consumers, we turn to Petronio’s (2002)
communication privacy management (CPM) theory that explores how
people regulate information they consider to be private. At its core, the
3
Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 53 (2020) 101774
theory describes how individuals develop their own privacy rules to
calculate the risks and benefits of disclosing information. The theory
contends that privacy management is dialectic in that people need to
disclose private information to fulfill social functions and needs, while
also concealing information to maintain their protection (Baruh et al.,
2017). In recent years, CPM has been widely adopted by scholars
examining information privacy concerns in the context of social media
use (e.g., Cavusoglu et al., 2016; Child et al., 2012; DeGroot and Vik,
2017; Waters and Ackerman, 2011).
Businesses may be overestimating not just consumers’ comfort with
sharing their personal data, but also the extent to which they feel they
receive fair value in exchange (Conroy et al., 2014). By applying the
CPM theory, this study explores the tension between users’ information
privacy concerns (Alashoor et al., 2017; Bellman et al., 2004; Hazari and
Brown, 2013; Proudfoot et al., 2018) and the benefits associated with
social media use—such as supporting self-presentation, social relation­
ships, entertainment, and information sharing (Blatterer, 2010; Debatin
et al., 2009; Fox and Moreland, 2015; Quinn, 2016; Sundar and Lim­
peros, 2013). Importantly, we examine this tension in relation to peo­
ple’s attitudes towards marketers using their publicly available social
media data; thus, we hypothesize:
H1. Consumers’ perceived risks of using social media have a negative
relation with the comfort with marketers using their publicly available
social media data.
H2. Consumers’ perceived benefits of using social media have a posi­
tive relation with the comfort with marketers using their publicly
available social media data.
While considering both risks and benefits of being social, consumers
may engage in various information privacy protective responses (IPPR),
such as posting less often or posting less accurate information (Das and
Kramer, 2013; Gruzd and Hernandez-Garcia, 2018; Hayes et al., 2005;
Son and Kim, 2008). From the CPM theory perspective, IPPR can be
viewed as a mechanism to manage one’s privacy boundaries (Jeong and
Kim, 2017). Petronio (2002) theorizes that individuals set their privacy
boundaries from completely open to completely closed. One way to
engage in IPPR—and to assess one’s privacy boundaries—is to measure
the amount, depth, intent, polarity, and accuracy of one’s self-disclosure
on social media (Gruzd and Hernandez-Garcia, 2018). Our expectation
is that open boundary individuals may be more comfortable with mar­
keters using their publicly available social media data; thus, we
hypothesize:
H3. Consumers’ self-disclosure practices on social media have a posi­
tive relation with the comfort with marketers using their publicly
available social media data.
4. Method
4.1. Data collection
The research hypotheses were tested with data from a cross-national
survey based on the internet panel hosted by Research Now. Research
Now has been used by academic researchers to access panels of in­
dividuals based on specific criteria or as a representative sample of the
general population (Finucane et al., 2000; Freelon et al., 2008; Giles
et al., 2016; Zmud et al., 2016). The survey design was piloted and
refined over a one-year period. The broad research goal of the survey
was to understand individuals’ social media use, privacy concerns, and
comfort with third parties mining their publicly available information
on social media. Aligned with Research Now’s typical protocol, partic­
ipants were given eRewards, which are points that can be transferred to
various loyalty rewards programs, upon completion. The research pro­
posal was approved by the university’s Research Ethics Board in Canada.
The use of an online panel does not bias the survey results because
the survey solely focuses on internet users. Quota sampling was used to
J. Jacobson et al. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 53 (2020) 101774

align with the demographics of the Canadian population to increase the

Blog
representativeness of the data; participants were screened to match the

106
56
50
18
25
20
13
30
distributions in the 2016 Statistics Canada Census1 report including age
(at least 18 years old), gender,2 and location. Participants that met the
quota sampling requirements were shown a consent form that described

Reddit
the purpose, outlined what participants were being asked to do and

26
33
24
16
10

59
6
3
estimated time of completion, defined potential benefits and risks,
assured anonymity, outlined data protection and storage processes,

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described incentives, identified rights of research participants, and

66
16
46
19

82
provided contact information for the research team. All data was ano­

6
3
8
nymized and is presented in aggregate.
The online survey was hosted by Qualtrics and was open from June 1,

Snapchat
2017 to July 15, 2017. We engaged in active data cleaning throughout
the collection process and we ceased data collection once we reached

32
29
19
22
10

61
5
5
our target of 1500 completed respondents. We systematically excluded
responses that did not answer the “trap question” correctly to ensure

Pinterest
high quality responses. The survey had a median completion time of
17 min and 16 s. This research analyzes a subset of people (n = 751) who

181

229
48
37
64
39
30
59
have at least one public social media account considering this is the data
available to third parties (i.e. marketers). Table 1 shows the de­
mographic and social media characteristics of the sample used in this

LinkedIn
study. The sample is balanced across different age groups, but has

155
164

319
37
71
65
59
87
slightly more women than men (52% vs 48%).
The research asks participants about “publicly available social media
data,” which refers to information posted by the user or about the user

Instagram
by other people across platforms, for three reasons. First, even if an in­
dividual does not have a social media account on a particular platform,

129

204
75
51
63
37
27
26
they can still be targeted; social media platforms create “shadow pro­
files” of individuals who do not have an account on the platform, yet

Twitter
have data about the individual from their social contacts. Second,

160
139

299
marketers can scrape publicly available data from various social net­

60
74
57
51
57
works and are able to aggregate the data for marketing purposes.
Finally, marketing messages are shown across platforms using cookies.
While we recognize that people use specific social media platforms for YouTube
different reasons and get different gratifications, for the purposes of this 121
160

281
57
60
54
43
67
study, publicly available data needs to be understood in aggregate.
The survey asked respondents to indicate whether each of their social
media accounts were primarily public or private. The reason the word
Facebook

“primarily” was used in these questions is because users can maintain a

135

232
97

23
28
34
50
public account while also restricting access to few items in their profile 97
to a selected group of users; or in the opposite case, a user can have a
restricted account with few items shared with a wider audience.
Cumulative percentage

4.2. Instrument design

Derived from the theoretical framework, the research defines the

100.0%

100.0%
100.0%
52.1%

17.3%
37.8%
55.7%
72.3%

three predicting variables—Information Privacy Concerns, Gratifica­

tion, and Self-Disclosure—as multidimensional, second-order reflective-
formative latent variables. The instruments and scales for each construct
Percentage

have been validated by prior research. The target endogenous construct,

100.0%

marketing comfort, is defined as a formative composite and captures the

52.1%
47.9%
17.3%
20.5%
17.8%
16.6%
27.7%

three elements detailed in the literature review and theoretical frame­

work: comfort with the use of information posted publicly on social
media for targeted advertising, customer relations, and opinion mining.
391
360
130
154
134
125
208
751

To measure privacy concerns, following Stewart and Segars (2002),

N

the Concerns for Information Privacy (CFIP) instrument assesses one’s

Under 25
Category

Female

25–34
35–44
45–54

Total
Male

55 +

1
The market research company used for data collection, unfortunately, does
Sample demographics.

not include access to panel survey participants in Yukon, Northwest Territories,

and Nunavut.
2
The authors would like to acknowledge that we recognize gender is not
Demographic

binary. The screening question is aligned with Statistics Canada’s demographic

questions to recruit a representative sample for statistical analysis. Later in the
Gender
Table 1

survey, participants were given the opportunity to respond to a more inclusive

Age

question regarding gender.

4
J. Jacobson et al. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 53 (2020) 101774

Table 2
Discriminant Validity Assessment: HTMT (first-order constructs).
Heterotrait-monotrait ratio of correlations (HTMT)

COL ERR SUS UAC SDAc SDAD SDPN SDI G-INF G-SOC G-SP

COL
ERR 0.50
SUS 0.60 0.56
UAC 0.61 0.63 0.88
SDAc 0.08 0.18 0.16 0.15
SDAD 0.08 0.09 0.21 0.17 0.35
SDPN 0.06 0.18 0.14 0.18 0.64 0.47
SDI 0.08 0.21 0.34 0.35 0.74 0.15 0.67
G-INF 0.10 0.08 0.11 0.13 0.44 0.28 0.56 0.38
G-SOC 0.08 0.13 0.03 0.08 0.35 0.45 0.45 0.24 0.68
G-SP 0.06 0.11 0.11 0.14 0.43 0.30 0.66 0.42 0.72 0.71
G-ENT 0.11 0.05 0.08 0.13 0.38 0.27 0.50 0.35 0.83 0.68 0.68

concerns for information privacy in response to an organization’s use or

Table 3
potential use of their personal information across four dimensions:
Discriminant Validity Assessment: HTMT (second-order constructs).
collection (COL), errors (ERR), secondary use (SUS), and unauthorized
access (UAC). The research follows the Concern for Social Media In­ Heterotrait-monotrait ratio of correlations (HTMT)

formation Privacy (CFSMIP) instrument developed by Osatuyi (2015) to CFSMIP SD

support sharing information on social media. CFSMIP
Following Cheung et al. (2015), we assess the Gratification (GRAT) SD 0.24
of social media based on the following four dimensions: Information GRAT 0.13 0.58
Sharing3 (G-INF), New Relationship Building (G-SOC), Self-Presentation
(G-SP), and Enjoyment (G-Ent).
4.3.1. Measurement model assessment
Finally, self-disclosure captures four different dimensions (Lai and
Internal reliability was tested by observing composite reliability (ρc),
Yang, 2015; Leung, 2002): (1) Amount and Depth (SDAD): how much
with all values higher than 0.85, well above 0.6. All factorial loadings of
information people disclose on social media and to what extent people
the reflective indicators were above the cut-off level of 0.708. Conver­
reveal their personal and intimate information about themselves; (2)
gent validity was confirmed upon observation of AVE values, which
Positive/Negative Valence or Polarity (SDPN): to what extent their on­
were over the threshold of 0.5. As mentioned before, measurement of
line disclosures show their most positive and desirable self-image; (3)
the second-order variables proposed a reflective-formative approach
Accuracy (SDAc): the level of honesty and accuracy in one’s disclosures;
using Mode A for the higher order construct (Hair et al., 2018).
and (4) Intention (SDI): whether people are fully aware of their disclo­
Regarding marketing comfort, defined formative, after discarding po­
sures on social media. The items, originally proposed by Wheeless
tential multicollinearity issues upon observation of the VIF values, a
(1976, 1978), were modified to fit the social media use context (Lai and
bootstrapping procedure with 5000 subsamples shows that both comfort
Yang, 2015). The final items included in the research were previously
with the use of social media data for targeted advertising and for
used in the refined instrument for self-disclosure by Gruzd and
customer relations are significant, with outer weights of comfort with
Hernandez-Garcia (2018).
the use of information posted on social media for opinion mining being
Some scales were reversed to better interpret the results; in partic­
not significant (p = 0.06); however, the outer loading of comfort with
ular, CFSMIP: from strongly agree (higher concerns) to strongly
the use of personal social media data for opinion mining has a significant
disagree, GRAT: from strongly agree (higher gratification) to disagree,
outer loading of 0.82 (p < 0.001). This means that the indicator should
Self-Disclosure: from strongly agree (higher levels of disclosure) to
be interpreted as absolutely important for the measurement of market­
strongly disagree (lower levels of disclosure), and marketing comfort:
ing comfort, but relatively important when compared to the other two
from extremely comfortable to extremely uncomfortable (see Appendix
indicators, and thus is retained for the analysis. Appendix B and Ap­
A).
pendix C summarize the results of internal consistency and convergent
validity analyses.
4.3. Data analysis
Discriminant validity was assessed using the HTMT criterion
(Henseler et al., 2015) (see Tables 2 and 3). The results confirm
To test the research model, the study uses Partial Least Squares
discriminant validity between first-order constructs and between
Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), a non-parametric method.
second-order constructs as all values are lower than 0.85. There is one
PLS-SEM is an appropriate technique when the research goal is to pre­
exception: the heterotrait-monotrait ratio of correlations between sec­
dict key target products or identify key driver products in complex
ondary use and unauthorized access yields a value of 0.88. This result is
models that include formatively measured constructs (Hair et al., 2017).
aligned with the findings of Osatuyi (2015) and Gruzd and
The analysis follows the recommendations of Hair et al. (2017) for the
Hernandez-Garcia (2018). Considering that the value was lower than the
application of PLS-SEM, and Hair, Sarstedt, Ringle, and Gundegan
less restrictive limit of 0.90, and to preserve content validity, both
(2018) for assessment of hierarchical component models in PLS-SEM.
variables were kept independent.
According to these recommendations, the analysis includes a measure­
ment model assessment—of both reflective and formative varia­
bles—and structural model assessment using factor weighing scheme. 5. Results

Analysis of the variance inflation factor (VIF) returned values below

3, which suggests that there are no multicollinearity problems in the
model. The path coefficients (see Fig. 1) from Information Privacy
3
Cheung et al. (2015) refer to this dimension as “Convenience of Maintaining Concerns, Gratification, and Self-Disclosure, to marketing comfort are
Existing Relationships”. - 0.19, 0.30, and 0.14 respectively—all significant at p < 0.01, after a

5
J. Jacobson et al. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 53 (2020) 101774

Fig. 1. Results of the structural model assessment.

bootstrapping procedure with 5000 subsamples. The value of R2 for the

Table 4
new construct, marketing comfort, is 0.18; in other words, the three
Comfort with marketers using publicly available social media data.
predicting variables explain 18% of the variance in marketing comfort.
Considering the exploratory nature of the research and that the model Comfort level Targeted Opinion Customer
ads mining relations
introduces a new concept, this value may be considered acceptable. R2
values of 0.20 may be considered high in consumer behaviour disci­ Extremely comfortable 40 (5.3%) 62 (8.3%) 56 (7.5%)
Moderately comfortable 54 (7.2%) 89 (11.9%) 86 (11.5%)
plines, even though they may be considered moderate to weak for other
Slightly comfortable 98 (13%) 106 (14.1%) 116 (15.4%)
marketing issues in success driver studies (Hair et al., 2017a; Hair et al., Neither comfortable nor 160 176 (23.4%) 178 (23.7%)
2017b). The R2 value suggests low predictive accuracy of the model, uncomfortable (21.3%)
which might be partially explained by the high number of responses Slightly uncomfortable 125 104 (13.8%) 97 (12.9%)
expressing extreme discomfort with the use of social media data for (16.6%)
Moderately uncomfortable 100 88 (11.7%) 70 (9.3%)
marketing purposes, and also the strong positions about privacy con­
(13.3%)
cerns regarding unauthorized access and secondary use of the infor­ Extremely uncomfortable 174 126 (16.8%) 148 (19.7%)
mation. The inclusion of additional variables, which will be discussed in (23.2%)
the following section, could help to increase the predictive power of the
model. However, and regardless of proportion of variance explained, the
results of the analysis of the structural model confirm the significance of gratification (q2 = 0.05).
the hypothesized relations. The observation of the f2 effect sizes shows Aligned with the CPM theory, all three hypotheses are supported,
that self-disclosure has a negligible effect (f2 = 0.02) with a higher, yet which suggests that consumers are actively engaged in the assessment of
small, effect of privacy concerns (f2 = 0.04) and gratification (f2 = 0.08). risks and benefits when forming their attitudes towards the practice of
The blindfolding procedure with a distance omission of 7 returns posi­ marketers using the public’s social media data—with gratification being
tive values of Q2, which confirms the predictive relevance of the model; the strongest predictor of comfort. In accordance with H3, the results
however, observation of the q2 values unveil the negligible predictive also confirm that individuals with more open privacy boundaries are
relevance of self-disclosure (q2 = 0.01) and confirm the predictive more comfortable with this practice, but self-disclosure only accounted
relevance, even though small, of privacy concerns (q2 = 0.03) and for an additional 1.3% of the variance explained in marketing comfort,
suggesting that user behaviour (self-disclosure practices) by itself should

6
J. Jacobson et al.
not be used to determine one’s comfort with the studied practice.
Overall, while the majority of respondents were not comfortable
with marketers’ use of publicly available social media data (see Table 4),
the findings also suggest that social media users are not passive con­
sumers of advertisements. Individuals are actively assessing risks and
benefits, which supports the use of CPM theory in the context of social
media data and marketing, with targeted advertising being the strongest
contributing dimension of marketing comfort.
6. Discussion
6.1. Theoretical contributions
In the marketing literature and professional practice, there is
currently a lack of understanding of what the ethical norms are due to a
lack of research on people’s expectations of privacy and comfort with
marketers using social media data. Our research fills this gap by devel­
oping a nuanced understanding of consumers’ comfort with social media
marketing practices. Even when marketers are using public data, con­
sumers still have concerns about the use of their social media data:
53.1%, 42.3%, and 41.9% are uncomfortable with marketers using their
social media data for targeted advertisement, opinion mining, and
customer relations respectively (see Table 4).
The research also introduces a new construct, marketing comfort, to
address the link between marketing ethics and consumer comfort.
Marketing comfort comprises the three main functions of using social
media data for marketing purposes: pulling, pushing, and exchanging
information. The study, therefore, operationalizes marketing comfort as
an individual’s comfort with the use of information posted publicly on
social media for targeted advertising, customer relations, and opinion
mining.
To identify the drivers of marketing comfort, the three research hy­
potheses explore the relation between information privacy concerns,
uses and gratifications of social media, self-disclosure practices in social
media, and consumers’ comfort with marketers using their publicly
available social media data. The results further support the application
of the CPM theory in the context of publicly available social media data:
individuals are assessing the benefits and risks (H1 and H2) and actively
managing privacy boundaries by considering what they disclose (H3).
Thus, both risks and benefits play into consumer comfort, which shows
the applicability of the CPM theory. Importantly, the study extends
Petronio’s (2002) CPM theory in the context of publicly available social
media data, which is a major contribution to the literature. The results
confirm that, even though people are assessing their risks with the
practice, they are willing to compromise some privacy because they also
derive benefits from social media use. The findings also suggest the
applicability of the privacy calculus theory (Culnan and Armstrong,
1999) to the use of social media—users make a trade-off assessment of
the benefits of disclosure against their privacy concerns associated with
such disclosure.
6.2. Implications for practice
The research joins prior scholarship that has practical implications to
enhance marketing practices (Ismagilova et al., 2019; Kamboj et al.,
2018; Shareef et al., 2019). In particular, the study shows that while
users still value using social media platforms as a source of entertain­
ment and information—where they can express and present themselves
in favorable ways—they are becoming more aware of the use of these
platforms as major data warehousing and advertising platforms, as well
as the platforms’ role in “surveillance capitalism” (Zuboff, 2015). To
understand this growing duality, it is useful to recognize different levels
of data access in terms of who is accessing social media data and for
what purposes. Common scenarios of social media data collection and
use include: (1) social media platforms collecting data for targeted
marketing; (2) social media platforms analyzing data for internal
7
Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 53 (2020) 101774
purposes (e.g., to improve the user experience on the platform); (3)
social media platforms sharing data with affiliates and partners; (4)
users sharing data with third-party developers; and (5) third parties
accessing data using the platforms’ API without users’ consent. While
there are many ways to collect and use social media data, our research
demonstrates that social media users still have concerns with unautho­
rized access to, and secondary use of, their personal data.
From a marketing perspective, a major challenge is how to mitigate
privacy concerns while increasing the perceived benefits of using social
media data for marketing. The study supports the idea that creating clear
privacy policies is necessary (Arnold, 2018; Goldfarb and Tucker, 2013),
but not sufficient. Prior research shows that most users skim or do not
read privacy policies and terms of use because the platforms discourage
engagement using confusing and time-consuming legalese (Obar and
Oeldorf-Hirsch, 2018). In order to achieve the potential benefits of data
sharing, social media platforms and brands should adhere to transparent
consumer-oriented privacy policy practices (e.g., OPC, 2018); they also
need to empower users with a higher-level of control over what infor­
mation they want to share, with whom, and for what purpose (Prince,
2018). Consumers trust in social media platforms and comfort with
digital marketing practices may increase if platforms limit the access to
individuals’ personal data, improve transparency about the collection
and use of personal data, implement opt-in procedures, and offer mon­
etary or non-monetary benefits to consumers (Jai and King, 2016).
Furthermore, social media platforms may leverage increased privacy
controls and opt-in procedures to improve the performance and effec­
tiveness of targeted advertising (Tucker, 2014).
The study shows that targeted advertising is the strongest contrib­
uting element to marketing comfort. It is likely that consumers are more
familiar with, and have more direct exposure to, targeted ads than the
other two dimensions: opinion mining and customer relations. The use
of social media data for opinion mining and customer relations are more
masked, which means the implications of these practices are less
apparent to average social media users. This finding points to the need
for consumer education on the emerging marketing practices that may
be less apparent in the day-to-day use of social media. Digital literacy
will continue to be crucial as technologies evolve and new ways to use
individuals’ data emerge. The onus does not only lie with individuals;
rather, third parties that use the data need to be held to higher ethical
standards.
Ethical issues have always arisen in marketing, but marketing pro­
fessionals are now tasked with more complex and insidious ethical sit­
uations that require a high level of technical and ethical literacy. The
impact of a particular decision or action made by a marketing profes­
sional may not be immediately obvious, or ever become apparent to the
public, but there may still be critical implications for consumers. Recent
high-profile news stories evidence the perils of social media marketing,
such as the ability to target advertising to racists and bigots on Facebook
(e.g., using Facebook’s functionality to target “Jew-haters” as a de­
mographic variable or use the filtering mechanism to not display ads to
people with “ethnic affinities”) (Maheshwari and Isaac, 2017). Sparks
and Hunt (1998) find that marketers’ ethical sensitivity is achieved
through socialization and an understanding of the ethical norms. For
social media marketing to be executed effectively and ethically, the
recipient of the marketing material—the consumer—needs to be
comfortable with the practices.
As the practices of using social media in marketing are still devel­
oping, we advocate for ethics and consideration of consumers’ concerns
to be integrated into marketers’ practices moving forward. Decision-
makers should consider the norms of all relevant communities and
thus ensure “a broad consideration of stakeholder interests” (Dunfee
et al., 1999, p. 28). The decision-makers—in this case, marketers—need
to recognize and consider all the stakeholders that may be impacted by
the decision or action, especially because customers’ trust and confi­
dence is a required factor for marketers to maintain a positive long-term
relationship with them. Therefore, it is not only an ethical practice, but a
J. Jacobson et al.
practice that also makes sound business sense.
7. Conclusion
There is a lack of understanding related to consumers’ perceptions
about marketers’ use of their public social media data due to its recent
emergence, the complexity of the issues, and the dearth of research in
this area. Using communication privacy management theory as a theo­
retical lens, the research analyzes the public’s perceptions of this prac­
tice to better inform ethical marketing practices using a census-balanced
sample of the online adult Canadian population. There are two major
scholarly contributions of this research: (1) the extension and applica­
bility of communication privacy management theory to social media,
and (2) the introduction of marketing comfort, a new construct of high
importance for future marketing research. The 7-point Likert scale
measures individuals’ comfort with marketers’ use of social media data
by aggregating three common functions of using social media data for
marketing: extracting insights via opinion mining, delivering informa­
tion via targeted advertising, and communicating via customer relations
with new or existing customers. We hope that the construct will be
further tested and we encourage other researchers to apply this
construct when using both public and private data (as this research fo­
cuses on publicly available data), and in other countries to confirm the
results of this study.
From a practical perspective, while it is usually legally permissible
for third parties, such as marketers, to mine and use publicly available
social media data, our research evidences that many people are not
comfortable with this practice; as such, users’ attitudes may influence
their purchasing behaviour, which would critically impact marketers’
practices. Considering that the vast majority of online users are un­
comfortable with marketers using their publicly available social media
data, this research has implications for the wider marketing community
and marketing ethics. There is an opportunity for marketers to inform
and reassure the public about the ethical integrity of how they are using
the data (e.g., in aggregate rather than individually), but this requires
the development and communication of these ethical standards by all
marketing practitioners. The marketing community can, and must,
develop professional principles and guidelines on social media data use
that still affords them the ability to benefit from social media data, but
better speak to the concerns of consumers.
7.1. Limitations and future research directions
There may be cultural specificities that are important to consider in
understanding comfort with marketers use of social media (Tsai and
Men, 2012); thus, further research should seek to analyze this topic
cross-culturally. We also encourage future research to incorporate other
factors of the theory (e.g., culture, gender, motivation, trust, or context)
to improve the predictive power of this model.
As discussed in the methods section, a limitation of the research
model is its focus on social media in general, without consideration of
the platform being used. We acknowledge that different platforms may
provide different uses and gratifications, and they also may trigger
different privacy concerns—e.g., concerns about the use of personal and
activity data by Facebook after the Cambridge Analytica scandal— but it
is also worth noting that this research does not consider any specific
brand or company. This is a relevant issue because users might expect
that all the data they share with a social media platform is also collected,
8
Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 53 (2020) 101774
analyzed, and used by the different brands they follow and interact with,
or at least every interaction with the company. Such a consideration is
outside the scope of the present study; however, if this is the case, the
level of perceived trustworthiness—e.g., the ability, benevolence, and
integrity (Mayer et al., 1995)—of the company might help increase the
predictive power of the model. This process may be reinforced if trust
transfer happens, be it between targets (i.e. the social media platform
and the company) or from a context (i.e. from the company’s off­
line/online marketing practices to the social media context) (Stewart,
2003). Future research can analyze whether the explanatory power may
be increased if social media platforms are analyzed in isolation. Aligned
with Kamboj et al. (2018), all social media platforms were considered in
this research, but future research could examine how these factors may
manifest differently in different platforms, as recommended by Alalwan
(2018) and Alalwan et al. (2017).
The analysis also yields low predictive relevance of the model, with a
total variance explained of 18% of marketing comfort. This result does
not limit the validity of the relationships found in the analysis and is
partially explained by the high number of respondents that are
extremely uncomfortable with the use of their personal and activity data
for marketing purposes—especially for targeted advertisement. Because
a group-based segmentation approach is beyond the scope of this
research, further research should investigate whether segmentation of
consumers based on their privacy concerns and their uses and gratifi­
cations of social media could better explain marketing comfort—e.g.,
pragmatists, fundamentalists, and unconcerned (DMA, 2018a). The re­
sults point to the need for further refinement of the concept—especially,
for investigation of antecedents of marketing comfort that may improve
the accuracy of predictions, such as the above-mentioned perceived
trustworthiness or the consumers’ level of perceived control over how
their data are used (Goldfarb and Tucker, 2013).
Future work should also ask questions related to uses and gratifica­
tions in the context of advertising (O′ Donohoe, 1994). Furthermore,
future work should address consumer intention and behaviour as a
response to concerns of marketers using consumers’ social media data.
Considering the recent changes to Facebook’s ad platform that explicitly
identifies why users are seeing a particular ad, future research should
analyze how these disclaimers influence people’s comfort with the
practice of microtargeting. As of 2018, Facebook only applies this form
of disclosure to political ads, but we contend this practice should be
expanded to other forms of advertising and other social media platforms.
Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the new General Data Pro­
tection Regulation in the European Union, there continues to be a
growing need to understand consumers’ attitudes towards the use of
their social media data.
Acknowledgements
This research is supported in part through a five-year initiative on
“Social Media Data Stewardship” funded by the Canada Research Chairs
program (2015–2020; Principal Investigator: Gruzd, A.), eCampu­
sOntario research funding and the Ted Rogers School of Management at
Ryerson University. The authors would like to thank Elizabeth Dubois
for her collaboration in the development of the survey design; Jordan
Kilfoy, Christine Gagnon, and Jocelyn Stéphane Cadieux for their help
with the French translation of the survey; and members of the Social
Media Lab at Ryerson University for their feedback on the survey design.
J. Jacobson et al. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 53 (2020) 101774

Appendix A

See Table A1

Table A1
Measurement instrument.
Mean SD

Self-Disclosure (Wheeless, 1976; Lai and Yang, 2015)

When using your public account(s), to what extent do you agree with the following statements?(1 = Strongly agree, 7 = Strongly disagree)
Amount and Depth (SDAD) SDAD1 I usually talk about myself on social media for fairly long periods 5.84 1.47
SDAD2 I often discuss my feelings about myself on social media 5.35 1.64
SDAD3 I often express my personal beliefs and opinions on social media 4.52 1.86
SDAD4 I typically reveal information about myself on social media without intending to 5.34 1.61
SDAD5 I often disclose intimate, personal things about myself on social media without hesitation 5.81 1.48
SDAD6 When I post about myself on social media, the posts are fairly detailed 5.04 1.58
Polarity (SDPN) SDPN1 I usually disclose positive things about myself on social media 3.29 1.56
SDPN2 I normally express my good feelings about myself on social media 3.62 1.69
SDPN3 On the whole, my disclosures about myself on social media are more positive than negative 2.75 1.37
Accuracy (SDAc) SDAc1 My expressions of my own feelings, emotions, and experiences on social media are true reflections of myself 2.96 1.54
SDAc2 My self-disclosures on social media are completely accurate reflections of who I really am 3.12 1.51
SDAc3 My self-disclosures on social media can accurately reflect my own feelings, emotions, and experiences 3.31 1.58
SDAc4 My statements about my own feelings, emotions, and experiences on social media are always accurate self-perceptions 3.08 1.48
Intent (SDI) SDI1 When I express my personal feelings on social media, I am always aware of what I am doing and saying 2.33 1.37
SD2 When I reveal my feelings about myself on social media, I consciously intend to do so 2.88 1.63
SDI3 When I self-disclose on social media, I am consciously aware of what I am revealing 2.32 1.34
Uses & Gratification (Cheung et al., 2015)
To what extent do you agree with the following statements:(1 = Strongly agree, 7 = Strongly disagree)
Information sharing (G-INF) G-INF1 Social media is convenient for informing all my friends about my ongoing activities 3.12 1.63
G-INF2 Social media allows me to save time when I want to share something new with my friends 3.03 1.62
G-INF3 I find social media efficient in sharing information with my friends 2.85 1.59
New Relationship Building G- Through social media I get connected to new people who share my interests 3.45 1.67
(G-SOC) SOC1
G- Social media helps me to expand my network 3.36 1.62
SOC2
G- I get to know new people through social media 3.76 1.73
SOC3
Self-presentation (G-SP) G-SP1 I try to make a good impression on others on social media 3.13 1.51
G-SP2 I try to present myself in a favorable way on social media 2.81 1.42
G-SP3 Social media helps me to present my best sides to others 3.54 1.56
Enjoyment (G-Ent) G-Ent1 When I am bored I often go to social media 2.97 1.80
G-Ent2 I find social media entertaining 2.81 1.48
G-Ent- I spend enjoyable and relaxing time on social media 3.16 1.55
3
Concerns for Information Privacy (Smith et al., 1996; Osatuyi, 2015)
To what extent do you agree with the following statements(1 = Strongly agree, 7 = Strongly disagree)
Errors (ERR) ERR1 Social media sites should take more steps to make sure that personal information in their database is accurate 2.31 1.39
ERR2 Social media sites should have better procedures to correct errors in personal information 2.43 1.36
ERR3 Social media sites should devote more time and effort to verifying the accuracy of the personal information in their 2.47 1.42
databases before using it for recommendations
Collection (COL) COL1 It usually bothers me when social media sites ask me for personal information 2.42 1.37
COL2 It usually bothers me when social media sites ask me for my current location information 2.42 1.43
COL3 It bothers me to give personal information to so many people on social media 2.52 1.45
COL4 I am concerned that social media sites are collecting too much personal information about me 2.53 1.39
Unauthorized access (UAC) UAC1 Databases that contain personal information should be protected from unauthorized access—no matter how much it 1.75 1.10
costs
UAC2 Social media sites should take more steps to make sure that unauthorized people cannot access personal information on 1.71 1.07
their site
UAC3 Databases that contain personal information should be highly secured 1.54 0.99
Secondary use (SUS) SUS1 Social media sites should not use personal information for any purpose unless it has been authorized by the individuals 1.65 1.05
who provide the information
SUS2 When people give personal information to social media sites for some reason, these sites should never use the 1.85 1.19
information for any other purpose
SUS3 Social media sites should never share personal information with third-party entities unless authorized by the individual 1.58 1.07
who provided the information
Marketing comfort (newly developed for this study)
How comfortable would you be if information about you or posted by you publicly on social media is used for …?(1 = Extremely comfortable, 7 = Extremely
uncomfortable)
Marketing comfort (MC) MCAD Targeted advertising 4.69 1.79
MCCR Customer relations 4.30 1.86
MCOM Opinion mining about products or services 4.25 1.85

9
J. Jacobson et al. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 53 (2020) 101774

Appendix B

See Table B1

Table B1
Internal reliability assessment: Outer loadings and weights (CFSMIP, SD and GRAT defined reflective-formative). In bold, indicator weights.
COL ERR SUS UAC SDAc SDAD SDI SDPN G-INF G-SOC G-SP G-Ent MKC

COL1 0.81
COL2 0.78
COL3 0.82
COL4 0.82
ERR1 0.88
ERR2 0.87
ERR3 0.87
SUS1 0.89
SUS2 0.82
SUS3 0.88
UAC1 0.85
UAC2 0.88
UAC3 0.86
SDAc1 0.86
SDAc2 0.83
SDAc3 0.76
SDAc4 0.85
SDAD1 0.83
SDAD2 0.86
SDAD3 0.73
SDAD4 0.78
SDAD5 0.82
SDAD6 0.78
SDI1 0.84
SDI2 0.81
SDI3 0.81
SDP1 0.84
SDP2 0.81
SDP3 0.79
G-INF1 0.88
G-INF2 0.91
G-INF3 0.92
G-SOC1 0.89
G-SOC2 0.83
G-SOC3 0.88
G-SP1 0.89
G-SP2 0.88
G-SP3 0.86
G-ENT1 0.85
G-ENT2 0.91
G-ENT3 0.91
MKC1 0.56
MKC2 0.35
MCK3 0.22

Appendix C

See Table C1

Table C1
Internal reliability and convergent validity assessment.
Construct reliability and convergent validity

α ρc AVE

COL 0.82 0.88 0.66

ERR 0.85 0.91 0.76
SUS 0.83 0.90 0.75
UAC 0.83 0.90 0.74
SDAc 0.84 0.89 0.68
SDAD 0.89 0.92 0.64
SDPN 0.74 0.85 0.66
SDI 0.76 0.86 0.68
G-INF 0.89 0.93 0.81
G-SOC 0.84 0.90 0.75
G-SP 0.85 0.91 0.77
G-ENT 0.87 0.92 0.80
MKC - - -

10
J. Jacobson et al. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 53 (2020) 101774

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ScienceDirect
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 149 (2014) 967 – 972

LUMEN 2014

Ethical Issues Concerning Online Social Networks

Mircea Turculeța,*
a
Ștefan cel Mare University, 13 University Str., 720029, Suceava, Romania

Abstract

The unprecedented development of online social networks raises a series of questions regarding the users’ ethical behaviour and
also the moral responsibility of the social network sites administrators. The purpose of this paper is to make a philosophical
analysis of three ethical themes treated both from the perspective of the online user as well as that of the social network sites
(S.N.S) administrators. The themes are: privacy, anonymity and trust. Privacy is analysed from the point of view of philosophy of
rights and from the point of view of the ethical responsibility of the site owners to protect internet user personal data. Anonymity
and trust are treated together and the paper stands to demonstrate that trust can be built between online anonyms as a duty
regarding respect and moral behaviour between two human beings, even if they don’t know each other. The paper offers answers
to these questions and describes the existent theories that deal with these three ethical themes.
©
© 2014
2014 The
The Authors.
Authors. Published
Published by
by Elsevier
Elsevier Ltd.
Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of LUMEN 2014.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of LUMEN 2014.
Keywords: social network sites (S.N.S); privacy; anonimity; trust; ethical problem.

1. Online social networks and information society

Alvin Toffler offers an explanatory model of the information society we are living in. In his work The Third
Wave, Toffler builds an explanatory paradigm based on a linear evolution of techniques and technology. Our current
informational society can be defined by three waves of technological evolution. The first one is the agricultural
revolution that enabled structural and ideological changes like the creation of cities and writing. The second wave is
represented by the industrial revolution that has had as effects: specialized schools, development of services and the
notion of new and continuous innovations in technology. The third wave refers to the information society (Toffler,

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: turculetioan@yahoo.com

1877-0428 © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of LUMEN 2014.
doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.08.317
968 Mircea Turculeț / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 149 (2014) 967 – 972

1983). Other concepts used with the same sense as computer-dominated world are knowledge society or post-
industrial society based on services. (Fucks, 2008).All these concepts are based on the fact that the use of computer
and computer-mediated communication represents a fundamental part in their definition. Moor describes the
information revolution or any technological revolution as having three stages: 1) the introduction stage, 2) the
permeation stage and 3) the power stage. These stages characterize any technological revolution. In the first stage,
the technological product will have huge production costs, the users will have limited access to it and the social
impact will be low. In the second stage, the standardization process will occur. The social impact is visible and the
production costs will become moderate. In the third stage the social impact will be major and it will determine a
large social impact. Moor’s model can be applied in the use of the personal computer. Today’s society is one in
which computer ’holds the power’ and it seems that its huge impact will not change for a long time. (Moor, 2005)
A similar model proposed by Moor can be used to explain the online social networking revolution. Using the
method of logical analogy, we can establish similarities when it comes to the structure of the web sites as being a
three stage construction, as well. First stage is the unidirectional information one in which there were few web sites
that handled the transmission of the information from the producer to the receiver. The second stage it the
multidimensional one, in which the user can also produce information on his/her own. Blogs, forums and the
possibility of posting comments on certain situations or information were developed. The third stage is that of global
exchange of information. This is the stage where social media exists, in which each user has a face like a blog, and
the personal information exchange is so important that it becomes a universal benchmark. It is important to mention
that the part of the internet development is closely related to the extension part of the power stage that Moor
described. When it comes to the third stage – the universal one, we discuss about the existence of Social Media.
Trying to give a functional definition to social media, we refer to it as the interaction between people, by creating,
sharing, changing and commenting social events of the virtual community and of certain social networks using
specialised online sites.
A different definition of social media is given by Andreas Kaplan, for whom social media is “a series of online
applications that are developed on Web 2.0 technological foundations and that allow the creation and exchange of
information produced by users”. This definition refers to online communication channels, to social sharing and
interaction by means of which very large online communities can produce and exchange ideas, photographic and audio
materials shared from one user to another. The online social networks are also part of social media. In the internet
taxonomy, social networks cover a whole range of homepages and blogs, in which the user is the most important
element of the online community he is member of. (Kaplan, Haenlein, 2010)
One of the definitions of the online social networking says that they are internet-based services that allow
individuals: 1. to create a public or semi-public profile within a closed system. 2. to create a list of other users he/she
shares a connection with.3.to see and have access to other users’ lists of connections and to those created by others
users in the system. But we should underline the difference between social network sites and social networking sites.
The first term refers to social sites and it is used to explain that they are rather a replica of social connections in the
real world transposed into the virtual one. The second term ending in –ing (present tense continuous) shows that an
action is taking place at the moment of speech and, within the conceptual frame of social networks, it refers to the
user’s actions, behaviours and reactions at the moment of the online interaction.
The ethical issues which will be further discussed refer both to the users’ moral behaviour while using these web
sites, as well as to the behaviour of those who manage these social networks and who make this social network
phenomenon possible.

2. The ethical challenges of privacy

One of the issues of the online social networks is the one of privacy. When speaking of privacy, two major issues
are raised. One involves the user’s morality while accessing these online social networks and the second one refers
to the information management within these systems, to the software producers, software that allows the record of
posts on these web sites. Defining privacy is a difficult task, especially if we take into consideration the fact that
before the first computer was developed, it had different meanings, starting with one’s right to be left alone. Privacy
is the individuals’, groups’ and institutions’ request to determine when, how and to what extent their own
information, which is considerate private, may be disclosed to a third party.
 Mircea Turculeț / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 149 (2014) 967 – 972 969

Another definition describes privacy as the selective and controlled access to the information that is personal.
Privacy doesn’t mean hiding. While the first one can be defined more broadly as the right to be left alone and the
right not to disclose private information, hiding refers to blocking or withholding any kind of information. Privacy
can be theorised from a dichotomous point of view. In a positive sense it means the individual’s control over his/her
own privacy circles, developed on four dimensions: private space in the real world, personal integrity within the
psychological dimension, social interaction and personal data protection in the informational dimension. From a
negative perspective, the definition of privacy could refer to the fact that the government, companies and other
factors must and do not interfere when it comes to a person’s private data. Information privacy refers to the control
that one person has over his/her private data, thoughts and behaviour when using the internet. (Moore, 2008)
There have been identified a series of issues especially related to the privacy of information in the online
environment. Among these issues, the most important are: follow up and monitoring the internet users’ activity,
gathering and analysing information, taking personal information out of their context, collecting users’ data by
governments or international companies.
The rapid development of technology led to new definitions of privacy especially in the online environment.
Every new technological generation created new and challenging issues related to privacy. A social network
represents a service provided through the means of the internet which allows users to create a public or semi-public
profile within a limited system. A social network such as Facebook allows users to make their own web page based
on their personal profile which generates the community of friends. From this perspective, social networks seem to
have an oxymoronic character, meaning that their participation to the virtual world aims, mainly, the exchange of
information, most of it having a private character. One of the reasons why users frequently post things on the
internet is the ubiquity on the social networks, the friendship with other users and the need to prove themselves.
Most of the times, users willingly disclose important personal information about themselves with the only purpose
of keeping their profile as dynamic as it can be. For instance, being friend with someone on Facebook, one can find
out more about that person than outside the virtual world. Information users post raise ethical problems. Examples
show us that we can speak of two moral different moral behaviours. One is specific to the real world and another to
the online environment. A guard from the U.K was fired because a lot of prisoners were on his friends list on a
social network. A lot of the verdicts in the American courts were appealed because certain members of the jury have
posted comments about the law suits that were being judged. It was considered that they were impartial when
making their decision. Beyond the fact that users wish to assert them and to maintain their profile active as a sign of
their virtual identity, these personal actions which seem to have no morality can end up as a punishment to the users
in the real world they want to escape from. (Kirkpatrick, 2011)
When it comes to manage social networks, problems arise as a result of the insufficient practices, which are often
hard to implement and which most of the times are deceiving. For instance, Facebook has privacy settings that are
more difficult to set compared to other sites, which means few users will rarely take the trouble to set them. Studies
indicate that social networks that have a lot of users, such as Facebook (over one billion users), Linkedin and
MySpace have major defaults when it comes to privacy issues. Privacy can be analysed from a philosophical point
of view as a series of human values such as: moral autonomy, equality, justice, dignity and self-fulfilment. Privacy
takes its moral value and justification from its role related to freedom and self-determination. The latter refers to the
right to determine what is necessary and what is needed in order to have a fulfilled life and personal development.
Self-determination is a part of the individuals’ autonomy based on will from a Kantian point of view. Self-
determination of free will is the basis of the moral action and a natural inalienable right. It is the principle and the
right that allow individuals to have a private life and to control their personal information quantity and context.
Private information can affect the right of free choice or can be used for economic manipulation purposes by
addressing customized commercial messages. We can add here their use for surveillance purposes by institutional
power.
Several solutions to solving the issue of privacy have been brought forward. We will refer to only three of them.
The first one consists in educating users by making choices that will protect their interests. This means users must
achieve personal abilities by limiting access to the information posted online. Limiting the access to this information
does not mean better computer skills or a better knowledge of a social site functions, but rather an awareness of the
importance of information posted on internet sites and of the way it can affect us in time. Internet information
970 Mircea Turculeț / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 149 (2014) 967 – 972

should be seen as public because it is persistent and can be abusively copied, distributed, reproduced without its
owner’s knowledge or consent. We should have ethical attitudes in the spirit of the idea that posted information is
not seen only by friends, but by the entire world. Limitation should be understood as a care towards the
informational content made public on the internet
The second solution to solve this ethical dilemma comes from browsers developers that have created programs
such as Collusion which allow users to see third parties’ activity while on the Internet. The solution does not
implicitly solve the issue of personal data transfer to third parties, but at least one can be aware of the other users
who follow his/her online activity. Because the new technologies generate ethical problems, often the solution is
technology. There is the tendency that the response to ethical issues occurred as a result of the technological
development to be one given also by technology. One of the reasons for this situation is determined by the fact that
ethics or ethical solutions cannot keep up with the extraordinary rhythm of the computer science progress.
Technical solutions seem to be viable when it comes to issues concerning the respect of the users’ rights. As Moor
pertinently observed, the role of ethics begins to be taken by technology or the answers to technical challenges of
technology rely on technology as well.” (Moor, 2005) First of all, we need to take into account that ethics has a
dynamic character. When new technologies come along there is a concern in solving ethical issues first. Or
sometimes it is recommended a moratorium on technological development until ethics catches up. Both approaches
are better than to sort ethical issues first, after the damage has already been made. Even so, we cannot anticipate all
ethical issues that will arise as a result of technological development. When speaking about solving ethical issues by
technology, we could develop a new set of ethical technologies in order to respect human rights. A third solution is
given by the users’ anonymity. The lack of the user’s identity protects his/her personal data, his/her image and thus
it reduces the role of the social network’s administrator in creating privacy systems. Still, anonymity can be seen as
not taking responsibility for his/her action, as a moral irresponsibility.

3. Trust between anonyms

Moral relationships cannot exist without the concept of trust. Trust is a must, we may say, an ethical need in
order for a community to exist, regardless of the real-virtual dichotomous space. Trust is important in personal
relationships, for the individual’s good as well as for building self-trust. As consciousness is bipolar, always self-
consciousness and the consciousness about others, trust is also developed on a bi-dimension by moral reference to
one another. This structure consists of trusting someone, so that someone else trusts you in return. Aristotle made
the analysis of trust within the concept of friendship and good will. Good will involves trust between friends.
Friendship involves mutual good will, each one wishing the best for the other, and this good will should be
appreciated by both parties. On the contrary, friendship means trusting each other, not being unfair to each other and
all the other qualities.” (Aristotel, 1988)
If one trusts someone, he/she will open up to the other person, he/she will become vulnerable in front the other in
a certain way. By this open up to someone ones’ trust in others becomes stronger. Trust depends on the context as
well. We can trust someone in a certain context, but not in others. Trust is related to context but this is compatible
when it comes to creating a trust pattern. A sees B worthy of trust in context C, but nor necessary in context D. Here
is a relevant example: A trusts B to care for his children while he is away, but does not trust him when going to a
party (context D), as B may not stay sober at that party. The pattern created by Wickert is applicable to some point
when it comes to online trust. It is acceptable if one knows the social network user from a non-virtual environment.
One knows what his/her expectations are when it comes to trust and he/she can create a certain pattern of behaviour
when it comes to trust in virtual world. Problems may arise when one communicates with virtual users who he/she
has not met before. The online contexts are different from the offline ones. The contexts of some social networks
may be unknown and cannot generate trust in others, as it happens in known contexts. There are social networks that
don’t require the user’s real names or address, networks in which the user who puts his/her trust meets the unknown.
(Weckert, 2005)
Accessing a virtual community raises problems that are not to be neglected. For instance, Facebook has over a
billion users, and each has a list of more or less 140 friends. There are also users who have over 5000 friends (the
maximum admitted limit which the sites administrators allows.) How could one possibly trust them all, if some of
 Mircea Turculeț / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 149 (2014) 967 – 972 971

them have never been met in the real world? Internet is not a community in which rules are respected by all. Online
communities transgress cultures, and this generates problems when it comes to trust. But the most difficult of all
issues is the lack of ‘bodily’ presence of the human being within the social network. Corporeality has a special
meaning when speaking about identity. The real bodily presence represents the basic fundament of trusting in
reality. In the virtual environment one doesn’t know who he/she is talking to, especially if the network permits some
users to stay anonymous such as Social Number, where names are replaced by a number or in virtual world, such as
Second Life, where identity is replaced by an icon. Anonymity forces one to wonder if the person behind the
computer screen will act responsibly. The fact that he/she uses an image does not give him/her a guaranty of his/her
responsibility towards him/her. One cannot have the certainty that the person from that picture posted on Facebook,
which he/she never met outside the virtual world, is really that the person. The strongest argument is the fact that the
user has absolute control over what he/she chooses to introduce to others and over the image he/she creates as
virtual identity. When one has the possibility to create his/her own identity, the positive aspects will prevail over the
negative ones by the mystification of his/her own image.
Trust in the online environment has a lot do to with communication and vulnerability. Dreyfus expresses his
doubts about the way in which one may replace trust given by the physical presence of a person by an image which
may or may not be true. From our childhood we know that trust is mainly built especially when we see a person
many times, thus, trust is founded on feeling secure with those who care for us. But this experience does not exist in
the online environment. “Trust partially depends on the experience that the others do not take advantage of us. One
may be in the same room with someone who could hurt or humiliate him/her, but if that someone chooses not to do
so, corporal vulnerability is reduced. There is no trust without a certain degree of vulnerability. (Dreyfus, 2001)
Lévinas places trust at the centre of morality, and meeting the other, especially in person, and especially the eye
contact invites us to absolute moral responsibility. The experience of the face to face contact makes us see human
vulnerability. Physical proximity is asymmetrical because oneis responsible for the other, but the other may not feel
the same. The issue of aface presence begins to make sense in the context of an ethical solution by posting profile
pictures or by having web cam conversations. We can speak of a philosophy based on which an image could lead to
a moral responsibility in the way Lévinas sees it. (Lévinas, 2000)
The solutions offered for this sort of issue are diverse. One of them lies in the structure of the social sites. For
example, Ebay has developed an electronic system made of a data base in which the ones who log in can evaluate
the integrity and the reputation of a potential partner. Any registered user can leave positive, negative or neutral
comments about another user. This data base represents a sort of user’s ‘business card’. There are online social
networks on which one can create a new account only based on an existing user’s recommendation. The issue of
trust rises especially when the users are anonymous. John Weckert says that, in order to build trust one needs to see
the others as worthy of his/her trust. Let us say, A behaves in a way that says B is trustworthy. B has the possibility
of proving that. If B behaves accordingly, things could evolve positively, even if they do not really know each other.
Trust is built based on experience. Weckert proves that trust is possible if one chooses to trust another. The one who
chooses to give trust must decide whether to bet on trust if the utility of trustworthy achievements is greater than the
one of non-achievements.
Another solution offered in the issue of trust is that of Bjørn Myskja. Starting from the Kantian categorical
imperative, Bjørn Myskja develops an interesting demonstration of trust based on human action as virtual action.
Any human being must react as if a legislator member of the universal kingdom of purposes, Kant says. According
to the imperative, we should affirm the human perfection through moral action. We must act as if the law of the
hypothetical imperative could become universal. We must act as if the artificial worlds are real ones, and the people
we meet are just like us, moral human beings. The arguments that he uses are also interesting. Kant says that
deceiving is allowed in certain situations. If someone perceives us as being weak, as we really are, he/she may
corrupt us. Pretending to be better is not only deceiving but it also implies being responsible by doing so. We are
aware that the communication with others is not as it is, but as he/she wants to be because we pretend to be someone
we are not, too. We can deceive others to protect ourselves from being judged in a negative light, but so can he/she.
Trust can be built even from this hiding. (Bjorn, 2008)
972 Mircea Turculeț / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 149 (2014) 967 – 972

4. Conclusions

There is a link between privacy, anonymity and trust. Anonymity can protect privacy because the social network
user is not forced to provide his/her personal data. Also, in this situation the site administrator doesn’t have any
moral issues regarding the users’ personal data. Anonymity can also be seen as fleeing from moral responsibility,
from our actions in the social networking virtual world. Also, anonymity doesn’t suppose lack of trust between
users. Trust can be created as a game of chance, or as moral duty between different human beings. The relation
between privacy and trust is a difficult one at the user’s level because the user most of the time is unconscious about
the dangers of posting personal information about him/herself. The same relation raises difficult issues on the duty
of online social networks administrators about how they can use the data provided by the online users in commercial
or third parties interests.

References

Toffler, Al. (1983). Al treilea val. București: Ed. Didactică și Pedagogică.

Moor, J. H. (2005). Why we need better ethics for emerging technologies, Ethics and Information Technology, 7, 111-119
Kaplan, A., Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world unite! The challenges and the opportunities of Social Media, Business Horizons, 53, 59-68
Moore, A. (2008). Defining privacy, Journal of Social Philosophy, Vol. 39, No.3, 411-429
Kirkpatrick, D. (2011). Efectul Facebook. București: Ed. Philobia, p. 242-244.
Aristotel, (1988). Etica nicomahică. Bucuresti: Ed. Didactică și Pedagogică, p.187.
Weckert, J. (2005). Trust in Cyberspace. In The impact of internet on our moral lives, State University of New York, p.101
Dreyfus, H. (2001). On the internet. London: Ed. Routledge, p. 72.
Bjorn, K. M. (2008). The categorical imperative and the ethics of trust. In Ethics and Information Technology, 10, 204-209.
Lévinas, E. (2000). Între noi. Încercare de a-l gândi pe celălalt. București: Ed. All.
Fuchs, C. (2008). Internet and society. New York: Ed. Routledge.
 Technology, Pedagogy and Education

ISSN: 1475-939X (Print) 1747-5139 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtpe20

Towards an understanding of social media use in

the classroom: a literature review

Antoine Van Den Beemt, Marieke Thurlings & Myrthe Willems

To cite this article: Antoine Van Den Beemt, Marieke Thurlings & Myrthe Willems (2020) Towards
an understanding of social media use in the classroom: a literature review, Technology, Pedagogy
and Education, 29:1, 35-55, DOI: 10.1080/1475939X.2019.1695657

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1475939X.2019.1695657

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TECHNOLOGY, PEDAGOGY AND EDUCATION
2020, VOL. 29, NO. 1, 35–55
https://doi.org/10.1080/1475939X.2019.1695657

Towards an understanding of social media use in the classroom: a

literature review
Antoine Van Den Beemt , Marieke Thurlings and Myrthe Willems
Eindhoven School of Education, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

The importance of social media for today’s youth often elicits teachers to Received 27 November 2017
explore educational use of these media. However, many teachers appear Accepted 3 May 2019
to struggle with the tension between possible pedagogical use and the KEYWORDS
tempting distraction of this technology. The current literature review aims Framework synthesis;
to present a synthesis of conditions and outcomes relevant for a well- primary; secondary; higher
considered, evidence-based use of social media, and teacher professional education; social media
development. A conceptual model consisting of intended curriculum
(school level), implemented curriculum (teacher level) and attained curri-
culum (student level) guided the research questions. The review included
271 articles, which were analysed with framework synthesis. Ambiguous
results and poor quality of studies often hindered clear statements about
conditions and outcomes regarding social media in the classroom.
Nonetheless, reported factors include school culture, attitude towards
social media, support, teacher professional development, learning goals
and a clear position in the curriculum. Considerations and advice for
educational practice were formulated.

1. Introduction
The importance of social media for today’s youth often elicits teachers to explore the added value of
educational use of these media (e.g. Bate, 2010). However, many teachers experience social media in
classrooms as disturbing (Selwyn, 2010). Teachers appear to struggle with the tension between
possible pedagogical use and the tempting distraction of this technology (Rosen, Carrier, & Cheever,
2013). Often a lack of technical pedagogical content knowledge to enrich teaching with social media
intensifies this tension (Van Acker, Van Buuren, Kreijns, & Vermeulen, 2011).
Defining social media is argued to be elusive (Tess, 2013). However, the concept of social media
can be summarised as encompassing Internet applications that support the creation and exchange
of user-generated content, that require a certain degree of self-disclosure and that allow for a certain
level of social presence (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Carr and Hayes (2015), in an effort to present
a more precise and future-proof definition, summarised social media as:
Social media are Internet-based channels that allow users to opportunistically interact and selectively self-
present, either in real-time or asynchronously, with both broad and narrow audiences who derive value from
user-generated content and the perception of interaction with others. (Carr & Hayes, 2015, p. 50)

Existing literature reviews on social media and education emphasise the pedagogical use of specific
applications and channels, such as wikis (Trocky & Buckley, 2016), Twitter (Aydin, 2014; Forgie et al.,
2013) or Facebook (Yang, Wang, Woo, & Quek, 2011), and examine (improvement of) learning results.

CONTACT Antoine van den Beemt a.a.j.v.d.beemt@tue.nl Eindhoven School of Education, Eindhoven University of
Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
© 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
36 A. VAN DEN BEEMT ET AL.

Although educational software, such as learning management systems, increasingly includes social
media-like functionalities, it often appears to limit aspects like self-presenting and types of
audiences.
Earlier reviews distinguished the researchers’ wish for a successful use of social media in class-
rooms and the often weak empirical evidence for this success (e.g. Tess, 2013). Some authors point
out that social media were never developed for pedagogical uses (Bruneel, De Wit, Verhoeven, &
Eelen, 2013; Kuiper, Volman, & Terwel, 2005), while others take this as a starting point for research
(Taylor, King, & Nelson, 2012). These reviews also showed that the evidence for increasing learning
results often consists of self-reports (Hew & Cheung, 2013). To our knowledge, only one large existing
review on 951 articles discussed multiple aspects of the complex whole of factors and effects (CASE,
2011). However, this review was limited to descriptions of these factors, instead of offering explain-
ing relations. One broader perspective meta-analysis of 40 years of research on ICT and learning
showed a small, yet significant, increase in learning results caused by ICT use in classrooms (Tamim,
Bernard, Borokhovski, Abrami, & Schmid, 2011).
Both empirical studies and literature reviews that analyse pedagogical use of Internet applica-
tions, such as social media, mainly focus on partial aspects. For instance, the relation between
Internet applications and reading skills (Takacs, Swart, & Bus, 2015), between Internet applications
and information literacy (Mills, 2010), or pedagogical approaches that suit Web 2.0 in secondary or
higher education (Hew & Cheung, 2013).
The focus on partial aspects, rather than an integrated view of social media in education, prohibits
understanding of what is known as the hidden curriculum: societal, institutional or lecturers’ values
that are transmitted unconsciously to students (Cotton, Winter, & Bailey, 2013). Edwards (2015)
explained how software, or rather computer code, is never objective, and reinforces existing
preferences of, for instance, teachers.
Taken together, many of these reviews reported barriers to using social media in class (e.g.
Henderson, Snyder, & Beale, 2013; Minocha, 2009), such as the fear of losing control over students
(Tess, 2013), lack of ICT skills (Minocha, 2009), and possible distractions of social media (Piotrowski,
2015). In contrast to these barriers, research also reports affordances, such as engagement and
student motivation. Reviews often also reported uncertainty about the effectiveness of social media
for improving learning results. Nonetheless, social media are imputed with great potential for
improving education.

1.1 Conceptual framework and research questions

For our analysis, we take the integrated perspective of three levels of curriculum (Van den Akker,
2003): (a) the intended curriculum – the formal ideal image; (b) the implemented curriculum – the
operationalised version; and (c) the attained curriculum – the curriculum as experienced by learners.
Using this perspective allows us to explore hypotheses around conditions and outcomes in sub-
areas, at the same time considering the complexity of everyday educational practice.
Each curriculum level helps to point out direct and indirect factors. For instance, the intended
curriculum especially plays out at the school level, where social media, like any other learning
materials, are (supposed to be) part of the educational vision and the policy on learning materials
(cf. Kirschner & Wopereis, 2003). Conditions in the implemented curriculum can be learning goals,
pedagogy, and existing knowledge, skills and values of teachers (Van Veen, Zwart, & Meirink, 2012).
In the attained curriculum, student characteristics play a role, such as preferences for types of
interactive media (Van den Beemt, Akkerman, & Simons, 2010), and knowledge, values, age and
gender (Kuiper et al., 2005).
Indirect factors play a role on all curriculum levels, and are, for instance, distraction in class
(Grosseck & Holotescu, 2008), changes in the perception of time (Duncheon & Tierney, 2013) and
developing learning skills, such as deep learning, influenced by a permanent disturbance of atten-
tion (Kuiper et al., 2005).
 TECHNOLOGY, PEDAGOGY AND EDUCATION 37

Figure 1. Conceptual model including three levels of curriculum and related factors. Interpersonal teacher–student relation was
added as a result of the review.

To do justice to the complex situation of factors and outcomes related to social media in
classrooms, this literature review intends to extend existing research using the perspective of the
three curriculum levels. Its intended audience is researchers and teachers. Our purpose is to enable
teachers to make a well-considered and evidence-based choice for the pedagogical use of social
media in their classrooms, while taking into account all three levels of the curriculum. In the process,
we focus on clarifying relevant factors, the relations between these factors and subsequent effects
on (the learning of) students, which taken together form a framework for our investigation (Figure 1).
The research questions central to this review are:

(1) Which goals and considerations are relevant for teachers in their choice to apply social media
in classrooms? (Intended curriculum)
(2) How and in what context do teachers use social media in their teaching practice?
(Implemented curriculum)
(3) What evidence (theoretical and/or empirical) can be found to show whether the intended
outcomes are realised? (Attained curriculum)
(4) What is the relation between factors and outcomes of social media in class?

2. Method
To answer our research questions, the pre-defined procedure called framework synthesis (Brunton,
Oliver, & Thomas, 2015; Oliver et al., 2004) was followed. Findings from individual studies are placed
into a framework which is based on existing and former studies (Brunton et al., 2015; Oliver et al.,
2004), which is then used to describe and interpret findings. In the current review, the conceptual
framework (see Figure 1) served as this framework. Moreover, framework synthesis supports to
understand the complexity of a given phenomenon, because it structures individual studies’ find-
ings, and examines how these are related in the context of that phenomenon (Brunton et al., 2015).
Framework synthesis consists of six concessive stages (Brunton et al., 2015). First, research
questions are posed, after which studies are searched (stage 2) and selected using several in- and/
or exclusion criteria (stage 3). Next, data is extracted from the selected studies into the framework.
38 A. VAN DEN BEEMT ET AL.

The fifth stage consists of synthesising the individual studies’ findings. The content of each part of
the framework is analysed by applying a thematic approach. Finally, these findings are interpreted.

2.1 Searching, screening and selecting studies

To search, screen and select studies, the databases Scopus and Web of Science were consulted. The
following keywords guided the search: (‘social media’ OR ‘social networking sites’ OR ‘social network-
ing software’) AND (education OR teacher OR student OR school). The query included peer-reviewed
articles published between January 2005 and November 2016. Furthermore, editions of relevant
journals (i.e. Computers & Education, Computers in Human Behavior, Journal of Computer Assisted
Learning and Learning, Media & Technology) were consulted, as well as the reference lists of found
articles (‘snowballing’; Petticrew & Roberts, 2006). This resulted in 4727 articles from Scopus, and in
2590 articles from Web of Science. After deleting duplicates, 6210 articles remained. Sixty-nine
articles were included from specialised journals on learning with ICT. Most of these (38 articles)
were published in Computers & Education.
Titles and abstracts of the complete set of articles were scanned based on the following inclusion
criteria: (a) the investigated social media include Internet-based channels that allow users to
opportunistically interact and selectively self-present, either in real time or asynchronously, with
both broad and narrow audiences who derive value from user-generated content and the percep-
tion of interaction with others (Carr & Hayes, 2015); (b) the study focused on at least one of the three
levels of curriculum (Van den Akker, 2003); (c) the study was performed in primary, secondary and/or
higher education; and (d) the study investigated at least one of the factors and/or effects of social
media in education. This stage resulted in 2001 articles. Next, the full text scan resulted in 1602 more
articles being labelled as off-topic, because they did not fit the inclusion criteria, despite promising
titles and abstracts.

2.2 Data extraction

In the fourth stage of the literature review, findings from the individual studies were extracted into
a results matrix (i.e. an Excel file) that was based on a codebook that linked to the conceptual
framework (Petticrew & Roberts, 2006). Each row of this matrix represented an individual study. The
columns consisted of information about the method, such as country of origin, number of partici-
pants and data collection strategies. The codes, describing the conditions and outcomes of the
conceptual framework, were added to the columns of the matrix. Findings from each individual
study that discussed specific conditions and outcomes were extracted to the respective cells. During
this stage, another 128 articles were excluded, because they were not empirical, appeared to be off-
topic, or full texts were not available, even after contacting the authors. This resulted in 271 articles
to be included in this review (see Figure 2).

2.3 Synthesising and interpreting findings of included studies

During the fifth and sixth stages, results from the studies were continuously compared with factors
in the conceptual model. To increase the reliability of this literature review, the authors collabo-
rated closely in the process. Points of debate and uncertainty were discussed until consensus was
reached. Results were brought together that focused on shared conditions or outcomes. This
resulted in enrichment of the model with relations between conditions and outcomes of the
possible educational use of social media. The most important addition to the model concerns the
variable ‘interpersonal relation’ between teachers and students, which emerged from many
studies.
 TECHNOLOGY, PEDAGOGY AND EDUCATION 39

Database selection Scopus Web of Science

n = 4727 n = 2590

Deduplication Duplicates = 1076

n =6210

Title and abstract scan Off-topic = 4209

n = 2001

Full text scan Off-topic = 1602

n = 399

Off-topic = 128
Full text reading

n = 271

Figure 2. Flowchart of the selection process.

3. Findings
This section first discusses an overview of included studies, followed by results on the three levels of
the intended curriculum (school), the implemented curriculum (teacher) and the attained curriculum
(student). References included in this section serve as illustrative examples of found results.

3.1 Overview of included studies

Descriptives of the included studies (see Table 1) show, amongst others, that a large number of
studies included empirical results about students, followed by studies that made statements about
teachers. Only a few studies discussed school level. Most studies were performed in higher education.
The small number of studies in primary and secondary education is not surprising; much educational
research takes place in higher education, and many social media applications apply an age limit.
Furthermore, social media are often textual, which suggests that a good command of language is
needed (Van den Beemt et al., 2010).
The number of respondents ranged in the studies from three to more than a thousand, with 6000
respondents in an Italian study as the upper limit. However, a considerable number of studies were
not explicit about respondents or demographics. Most studies showed equal gender divisions
among participants, apart from domains such as medical education or social sciences, which were
female dominated. This is in line with studies without an educational focus that show equal gender
divisions in social media use (e.g. Gray, 2018). Studies with larger respondent numbers mostly
transcended single domains or disciplines. Included single domain studies showed a slight over-
representation of medical education. Most studies applied surveys and used a quantitative approach
(112 studies) or a mixed-method approach (84 studies). Qualitative approaches, for example
40 A. VAN DEN BEEMT ET AL.

Table 1. Descriptive results of included articles (271 studies).

Country
USA 45
Asia (e.g. China, Taiwan, Malaysia) 39
UK 19
Australia 13
Turkey 11
Canada 5
Other countries, groups of countries 74
No location reported 65
Sector
Primary education 2
Primary and secondary education 11
Secondary education 31
Higher education 218
Undecided 9
Design
Quantitative 112
Qualitative 65
Mixed methods 84
Other (case description or literature review) 10
Journal
Educational use of ICT 171
General education 72
Other 28
School Total: 8
Facilitation 16
Image 7
Policy on curriculum materials 3
Educational vision 2
Teacher Total: 167
Professional development 17
Experiences, skills, values 43
Learning goals 2
Pedagogical activities 105
Student Total: 251*
Motivation 58
Learning outcomes 85
Experiences, skills, values 108
Interpersonal relation teacher–student 24
*The numbers do not add up because some studies discussed
multiple aspects.

interviews, were pursued in 65 studies. Two articles described a series of lessons, without further
analyses. The eight remaining articles contained reviews of empirical studies.
Most of the articles were designed as a single case study (Borko, 2004), in which social media were
applied as part of an educational programme in a specific educational context. Often these studies
first presented a large claim, such as ‘learning results will increase when one uses social media’. The
results of these studies subsequently showed more nuance, with strikingly often little statistical
significance of the results. The tone of voice of discussion and conclusion sections sometimes
betrayed the attitude of the researcher regarding social media.
Perception research was conducted in a large part of the studies. Researchers asked students
about their experienced outcomes on learning and motivation of a tool. In addition to perception
research, many articles present effect studies that only examined partial aspects of educational use
of social media. For instance, the relation between social media and diverse effects such as academic
achievement (e.g. Kirschner & Karpinski, 2010), motivation (e.g. Junco, Heiberger, & Loken, 2011),
collaboration (e.g. Purser, Towndrow, & Aranguiz, 2013) and the development of information literacy
(e.g. Ahn, 2013). Studies also connected informal learning to social media (e.g. Bartlett-Bragg, 2006)
and examined ways in which teachers use these media in class (Bate, 2010).
 TECHNOLOGY, PEDAGOGY AND EDUCATION 41

3.2 School
3.2.1 Facilitation and support of processes
Facilitation and support entailed two aspects: (1) facilitating the use of social media for learning, for
instance with infrastructure or possibilities for professional development, and (2) using social media,
for instance to support communities of practice. The included studies emphasised facilitation of
infrastructure or professional development. Often this included attention to teachers’ responses and
attitudes, for instance by showing that teachers were less inclined to use social media when
facilitation did not meet their expectations. On the school level, there is still work to be done to
take away fears among teachers about social media as pedagogical tool (Goktalay, 2013). Teachers
reported fear of insufficient support, and of insufficient knowledge to find things out by themselves.
These fears are affected by experience with social media (see also subsection '3.3 Teacher'), thus
showing a relation between facilitation (policy on school level) and attitude (teacher).
Additionally, the included studies most often reported barriers on the school level. For instance,
organisational limitations (‘the principal would not allow it’; Mawdsley, 2015; Minocha, 2009), net-
work restrictions (‘we should avoid network overload’), lack of money to invest in technical infra-
structure, lack of knowledge among management and lack of access to technology. These barriers
are related to school leaders’ anxiety about using social media (Cox & McLeod, 2014a). School leaders
thought that social media require extra time or they thought technical problems would hinder them
from being online. On the other hand, reasons that made school management more inclined to allow
for social media use were, for instance, increased transparency in decision-making processes and
budgets, positive influence on personal and professional development of school leaders, and an
extra channel for management information (Cox & McLeod, 2014a).
Regarding the second aspect of facilitation, social media were used in two studies to support
teachers. In one study, school leaders used Twitter to organise a community of practice and to
communicate policy (Sauers & Richardson, 2015). The other study used Facebook to support teachers
in implementing a new learning approach (Shraim, 2014).

3.2.2 Image
One reported benefit of using social media to improve the image of schools and universities is that
a larger audience can be reached, although this did not result in more student engagement
(Bélanger, Bali, & Longden, 2014). Furthermore, students reported thinking more positively about
teachers and their university when social media were used in education (Neier & Zayer, 2015).
Both school leaders (Cox & McLeod, 2014a) and school principals (Cox & McLeod, 2014b) reported
that social media enabled more rapid and frequent interaction with stakeholders, which resulted in
better mutual relations. School principals reported that social media allowed them to express and
share their visions better (Cox & McLeod, 2014b), and school leaders argued that they could no
longer work without these media in contemporary times (Cox & McLeod, 2014a). In particular,
Facebook and Twitter were reported as being the most popular tools (Bélanger et al., 2014).
Reported disadvantages were the possible negative publicity, for instance when disturbing
events about the school appeared on social media (Cox & McLeod, 2014a), and the obligational
character: once you start communicating through social media, people expect you to continue (Cox
& McLeod, 2014a).

3.2.3 Educational vision and policy on curriculum materials

Only two studies discussed educational vision and policy on curriculum materials. Cox and McLeod
(2014a) showed that publicly sharing and communicating the school’s vision was perceived as
a benefit. Preston et al. (2015) were more critical: they concluded that for education to renew in
the direction of digital teaching, school boards should acknowledge and recognise this goal, and
incorporate it in plans for improvement. Social media can help to share this goal and vision with
stakeholders (cf. Cox & McLeod, 2014a).
42 A. VAN DEN BEEMT ET AL.

3.3 Teacher
Several studies discussed teacher professional development and social media. One group of studies
discussed how professional development plays a role for using social media. A second group of
studies investigated how teachers could use social media in professional development trajectories.

3.3.1 Professional development for using social media

Implementing social media implies new teacher roles and new approaches to teaching and learning
(Hoyos, 2014). Furthermore, Buus (2012) argued for the need for teachers’ awareness of possibilities
and technical challenges. To fulfil these roles, approaches and awareness, training and re-training of
teachers are required (Gan, Menkhoff, & Smith, 2015), including technophobic teachers. In contrast
to Gan et al. (2015), Buus (2012) suggested scaffolding learning processes. Scaffolding strategies
could include peer mentoring and experts demonstrating technical aspects (Cochrane & Narayan,
2012). Teachers who took part in such a trajectory along the way obtained an early adopter role,
using similar strategies to help their colleagues. Whatever its form, teacher professional develop-
ment was shown to be a significant predictor of the integration of Web 2.0 in schools (Pan & Franklin,
2011). However, when applying the plan in practice, lack of time on the teacher side could be
a barrier (Preston et al., 2015).

3.3.2 Professional development by means of social media

Studies that applied social media for teacher professional development all concluded that social
media promoted teacher professional development (Ostashewski, Moisey, & Reid, 2011; Visser,
Calvert Evering, & Barrett, 2014). In particular, the possibility to reflect and respond instantaneously
was valued (Yuksel, 2013). The popularity of websites such as Facebook is reported to be increasing
among teachers because these websites can be used to gain knowledge, receive feedback and
support, while simultaneously sharing teachers’ knowledge and expertise (Trust, 2012).

3.3.3 Experiences, skills and values

Many teachers would like to use social media (Kukulska-Hulme, 2012; Sobaih, Moustafa,
Ghandforoush, & Khan, 2016). Some studies discussed earlier experiences (Goktalay, 2013) and
concluded that, for instance, earlier experiences with blended learning correlate positively with
the educational use of social media (Manca & Ranieri, 2016). Other studies reported that inexper-
ienced teachers in higher education are more worried about the effects of social media on their
person, while more experienced teachers are especially worried about the impact of social media on
their students (Goktalay, 2013). When teachers experienced social media creating a tension between
private use and professional responsibility, they tried to find a middle ground with their professional
culture on the one hand, and their own values and ideals on the other (Veletsianos & Kimmons,
2013).
From the included studies, a long list of experienced barriers can be derived. In addition to lack of
experience (Goktalay, 2013) and of knowledge about social media (Dickie & Meier, 2015; Sobaih et al.,
2016), teachers also did not know how to integrate social media in existing online learning environ-
ments (Kamalodeen & Jameson-Charles, 2016; Minocha, 2009; Sobaih et al., 2016). Reported practical
problems are lack of infrastructure (Kamalodeen & Jameson-Charles, 2016), access (Balakrishnan,
2014; Veira, Leacock, & Warrican, 2014) and time (Kukulska-Hulme, 2012; Margaryan, Littlejohn, &
Vojt, 2011; Sobaih et al., 2016). Teachers also worried about privacy and security (Dickie & Meier,
2015), cyberbullying (Minocha, 2009) and ethics (Sobaih et al., 2016).
Furthermore, teachers were afraid to lose control in class (Minocha, 2009; Sobaih et al., 2016).
They also thought that social media belong to students and that they should not interfere (Dickie &
Meier, 2015). Sometimes the attitude of students was experienced as problematic (Goktalay, 2013),
or teachers were afraid that students who are less technically proficient would remain behind
(Minocha, 2009). It was also argued that social media are better suited for topics such as languages
 TECHNOLOGY, PEDAGOGY AND EDUCATION 43

(Margaryan et al., 2011). Finally, motivation (Kamalodeen & Jameson-Charles, 2016) and the will-
ingness to put effort into learning how to use social media in class were reported (Kukulska-Hulme,
2012), just like resistance to change (Margaryan et al., 2011). Veletsianos, Kimmons, and French
(2013) argued that resistance and fear are not so much barriers as an expression of high expectations
about the contribution of social media to education.
The demographical factors of age and experience were reported to correlate negatively with
attitude towards social media (Manca & Ranieri, 2016; Minocha, 2009). Gender differences were not
found for the actual use of social media (Manca & Ranieri, 2016). One study found that male teachers,
with a slight difference, reported more often a necessary distinction between private and profes-
sional life (Prescott, 2014).
Some teachers distinguished between reasons for using specific tools (Manca & Ranieri, 2016). For
instance, Facebook and Twitter were used to motivate students, and blogs and wikis to improve
education. Social media was reported as a way to stay in touch with other teachers (Dermentzi,
Papagiannidis, Toro, & Yannopoulou, 2016) or to remain up to date with developments in their field
(Tenopir, Volentine, & King, 2013; Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2013). Teachers with a teacher-guided
style thought that what happens on Facebook should stay there (Prescott, 2014), which implies
a distinction between private and professional exchanges. Teachers with a more student-oriented
style reported that they should teach students how to deal with online discussions and inappropriate
online behaviour (Prescott, 2014).
A handful of studies asked students about their teachers’ skills and knowledge (e.g. Gikas & Grant,
2013; Jones, Blackey, Fitzgibbon, & Chew, 2010; Margaryan et al., 2011). In sum, students thought
that teachers have insufficient social media skills and knowledge, and that they do not know how to
use these media, and that, frustratingly, they do not even try to start with social media. Teachers, in
the eyes of students, do not want mobile devices in class. Furthermore, students reported that
humour and personal things shared by teachers on Facebook positively affect students’ engagement
with the specific teacher’s course (Imlawi, Gregg, & Karimi, 2015).

3.3.4 Learning goals

Two studies discussed learning goals (Bicen & Uzunboylu, 2013; Dougherty & Andercheck, 2014).
These studies showed that teachers and students reported the importance of formulating and
communicating learning goals related to the use of social media.

3.3.5 Pedagogical activities

Several social media were used as learning tools in the included articles. Facebook was the most
often investigated (e.g. Kabilan, 2016; O’Bannon, Beard, & Britt, 2013; Safuan & Soh, 2013;
Vikneswaran & Krish, 2015). Twitter (e.g. Lin, Hoffman, & Borengasser, 2013; Prestridge, 2014; Yakin
& Tinmaz, 2013) and blogs (e.g. Greenhow, Gibbins, & Menzer, 2015; Kiili, Multisilta, Suominen, &
Ketamo, 2010) were less often investigated. In addition, YouTube, tools developed for specific
purposes and discussion forums (e.g. Abdullah, Yaacob, & Rahim, 2013; Mbati, 2013) were investi-
gated as curriculum materials. In general, these studies concluded that the tool was an interesting
addition; however, that its use should not stand in the way of instruction (e.g. Yakin & Tinmaz, 2013).
The included studies rarely reported social media as part of domain-specific pedagogies.
Studies asked students how they perceived specific applications as learning tools. Respondents
reported social media as user-friendly, especially compared with specific learning management
systems such as Moodle (Bahner et al., 2012; Deng & Tavares, 2013). Social media were reported as
interactive (Jong, Lai, Hsia, Lin, & Liao, 2014; Loving & Ochoa, 2011) and easy to use for communica-
tion and discussion (Manasijević, Živković, Arsić, & Milošević, 2016; O’Bannon et al., 2013), and for
sharing knowledge and information (Lin et al., 2013; Loving & Ochoa, 2011).
One advantage reported in some studies was the combination of informal and formal learning
(McCarthy, 2010). This connects to the affordance of social media to collaborate and support (Chen &
Bryer, 2012; Jong et al., 2014; Safuan & Soh, 2013), and to get help from the teacher (Prestridge,
44 A. VAN DEN BEEMT ET AL.

2014). In other studies, there was reference to community building (Andersson & Räisänen, 2014;
Kabilan, 2016; Kaufer, Gunawardena, Tan, & Cheek, 2011), with the aim of collaboratively practising
specific skills in authentic situations (Safuan & Soh, 2013; Whittaker, Howarth, & Lymn, 2014). This, in
turn, prepares students for the future and enables them to develop knowledge (Yakin & Tinmaz,
2013) and (professional) identity (Kabilan, 2016; Kaufer et al., 2011; Rinaldo, Laverie, & Tapp, 2011).
These benefits resemble social constructivist approaches to learning (Mbati, 2013), and Facebook
was especially valued because it enables teachers to apply such social constructivist approaches
(Gomez & Lee, 2015). The final benefit is increased transparency of assessment procedures through
using social media (Kiili et al., 2010; O’Bannon et al., 2013; Shih, 2011). However, this benefit was
refuted by Loving and Ochoa (2011), who argued that Facebook can never compete with a good
learning management system when it comes to assessment.
Teachers’ interference in online discussions made students feel less free to express their thoughts
and opinions (An, Shin, & Lim, 2009). However, evidence is ambiguous because Prestridge (2014)
showed that teachers’ input promoted learning and Lin et al. (2013) showed that when teachers did
not interfere at all, collaboration between students did not take place.
Finally, it should be emphasised that most of these studies presented students’ self-reports.
Moreover, two studies nuanced the pedagogical use of social media and proposed conditions
(Chen & Bryer, 2012; Veletsianos et al., 2013). Both argued that social media are no panacea. Goals
and application in classrooms should be appropriately considered and preceded by clearly defined
goals (cf. Gomez & Lee, 2015).

3.4 Students
3.4.1 Motivation
Many studies examined the effect on motivation of educational uses of social media. A large number of
these studies found that social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, increased students’ motivation
and engagement (e.g. Cole, Brynn Hibbert, & Kehoe, 2013; Evans, 2013; Rinaldo et al., 2011; Wang,
2013). The more students used Facebook, the more they felt part of their class (Dougherty &
Andercheck, 2014). Furthermore, the number of tweets sent was found to correlate positively with
student engagement (Evans, 2013; cf. Menkhoff, Chay, Bengtsson, Woodard, & Gan, 2015).
In contrast, other studies reported no increase in student motivation (Selwyn, 2009; Welch &
Bonnan-White, 2012), or even a decrease (Dyson, Vickers, Turtle, Cowan, & Tassone, 2015; Flanigan &
Babchuk, 2015). Welch and Bonnan-White (2012) for instance found that students who did not use
Twitter showed more study engagement compared with students who used Twitter. Other students
showed less positive attitudes towards social media when they reported social media as being
distracting because new messages appeared too fast, which caused feelings of being overwhelmed
and resulted in decreased participation (O’Bannon et al., 2013). Furthermore, students did not appear
to be motivated to use Twitter if it was used only as a source of information (Buzzelli, Holdan, Rota, &
McCarthy, 2016).

3.4.2 Learning results

Learning results were reported to improve by increasing interaction between students (e.g. Ahern,
Feller, & Nagle, 2016; Al-Rahmi, Othman, & Musa, 2014; Lai, 2016) and being active with learning
content (Bicen & Uzunboylu, 2013; Kabilan, 2016; Smith, 2014). However, social media did not
evidently cause this, because it can also be achieved in other ways. Or, as Al-Rahmi et al. (2014)
argued, collaborative learning is a condition to use the advantages of social media in class. Moreover,
Bicen, Ozdamli, and Uzunboylu (2012) showed that blended learning environments lead to better
results compared with just online learning.
Studies with an explicit focus on learning results in relation to social media as a learning tool showed
a diversity of results. Reported positive effects of Facebook and Twitter are for instance increased
student engagement (Junco et al., 2011) and better grades (Clarke & Nelson, 2012; Wang, 2013).
 TECHNOLOGY, PEDAGOGY AND EDUCATION 45

However, in many cases, students (González-Ramírez, Gascó, & Taverner, 2015; Safuan & Soh, 2013) and
teachers (Bicen & Uzunboylu, 2013) thought that learning results improved.
Negative learning results were often related to the distraction of social media and to students’
short attention spans (Gupta & Irwin, 2016; Junco, 2015; Paul, Baker, & Cochran, 2012; Wood et al.,
2012). Several studies that compared education with social media to education without these media
reported no differences in learning results (Callaghan & Bower, 2012; Evans, 2013; West, Moore, &
Barry, 2015). Only West et al. (2015) based this result on actual grades. The other studies’ results are
based on surveys among students, sometimes supplemented with observations and extended
feedback by students.
Some studies took diversity and students’ characteristics into account. Young students spend
more time on Facebook and consequently achieve lower grades compared with older students
(Junco, 2015). Strong self-regulation led to less distraction by social media and resulted in higher
grades (Rouis, Limayem, & Salehi-Sangari, 2011). Several studies nuanced claimed causality of earlier
found relations. For instance, Alwagait, Shahzad, and Alim (2015) and Abu-Shanab and Al-Tarawneh
(2015) proposed a reverse argument: getting lower grades could lead to increased Facebook use.
A noteworthy result is the use of social media, and especially Facebook, for writing lessons and
language courses. Studies with a focus on writing and language showed increased results and
interest among students when using social media as learning tools (Lee, Koo, & Kim, 2016;
Suthiwartnarueput & Wasanasomsithi, 2012; Vikneswaran & Krish, 2015).

3.4.3 Experiences, skills and values

The results of the included studies suggested that experience and values relate to country of origin.
For instances, studies from East Asia (Al-Rahmi et al., 2014; Huang, 2011; Menkhoff et al., 2015) or
Turkey (Baran, 2010; Ekoç, 2014; Uzunboylu, Bicen, & Cavus, 2011) reported more reticence and
ignorance among students. Western studies reported enthusiasm for social media (Dougherty &
Andercheck, 2014; Hill, Thomas, Diaz, & Simm, 2016; Thalluri & Penman, 2015), yet they also reported
worries about privacy and security (Wang, 2013). Furthermore, the studies showed a rapid develop-
ment over time: the earliest papers often showed negative values among students towards social
media, whereas more recent papers often showed evidence of a change in attitude (Pilli, 2015).
Regarding experience, Lowe, D’Alessandro, Winzar, Laffey, and Collier (2013) reported that
students with much social media experience are not necessarily convinced about the benefits of
social media as a learning tool. This connects to the image of social media as a leisure activity
(Balakrishnan, 2014; Donlan, 2014; Prestridge, 2014). When students had experience with computers,
they were more easily convinced of the use of social media in class (Lowe et al., 2013).
Also, skills can influence the attitude and use of social media as learning tools. Students who
possessed skills for applications different to those used in the classroom felt disadvantaged (Evans,
2013). Furthermore, students were more reserved in using discussion forums, for fear of their lack of
knowledge being clear (Veira et al., 2014).
Usually, studies reported positive values (i.e. attitude) towards social media as a learning tool
among students. In studies on Facebook, most students were positive about this application because
it provided more options for personal engagement (Arteaga Sánchez, Cortijo, & Javed, 2014),
communication (Souleles, 2012) and collaboration (Shraim, 2014). Other advantages were flexibility,
no travel time and fitting personal learning strategies (Kohtz, Gowda, Stockert, White, & Kennel,
2012). One study that compared attitude towards social media before and after using Facebook in
the classroom showed that students were less convinced afterwards of Facebook’s effectiveness as
a learning tool (Irwin, Ball, Desbrow, & Leveritt, 2012). Nonetheless, a majority of students stated they
would use Facebook in the future.
A few studies showed that students preferred Facebook over Twitter as a learning tool (Rinaldo
et al., 2011; Welch & Bonnan-White, 2012). Although in general students were not inclined to change
tools, they were more positive about Facebook for learning about grammar and writing
(Suthiwartnarueput & Wasanasomsithi, 2012). Other studies, in turn, showed that students were
46 A. VAN DEN BEEMT ET AL.

reluctant to use any social media tool in class, which directly affected their learning behaviour when
no alternative was provided (Nemetz, Aiken, Cooney, & Pascal, 2012).

3.4.4 Interpersonal student–teacher relations

Our conceptual model did not include teachers’ actions that strengthen their relations with students,
also known as interpersonal student–teacher relations. The data extraction phase, however, showed
several studies explicitly discussing this outcome. For instance, a positive attitude correlated with
student engagement in a course (Imlawi et al., 2015) and more positive interaction with the teacher
(Al-Rahmi et al., 2014). When teachers were able to efficiently shape their role in the chosen social
media tool, this led to a more learning-centred attitude among students, instead of an attitude
focused on communicating (Callaghan & Bower, 2012). This is especially the case when social media
were used for an online community (Evans, 2013). In these situations, students liked to be in touch
with their teacher through applications such as Twitter (Sendurur, Sendurur, & Yilmaz, 2015).
Facebook was in this context evaluated as a significantly faster communication channel compared
with other social media tools (Mueller, Della Peruta, & Del Giudice, 2014).
Again, contradicting results were found. Nkhoma et al. (2015) found a positive relation between
experience with social media and the quality of student–teacher interaction experienced on Facebook.
However, use of Facebook outside negatively influenced this relation: the more a student used
Facebook, the more negatively this student thought about the teacher–student relation. Matzat and
Vrieling (2016) reported no evidence for the correlation between social media use and teacher–student
relations. And finally, Ekoç (2014) and Hershkovitz and Forkosh-Baruch (2013) reported that students
do not consider Facebook to be the place to communicate with teachers.

4. Discussion
The motivation for this review was a lack of clarity in educational practice about social media: is the
distraction that comes with these media a burden for education? Or is it a blessing and could social
media usefully be applied as learning tools? Starting from the levels of curriculum (Van den Akker,
2003), we formulated research questions about the intended, implemented and attained curriculum.
Finally, we formulated a research question about the complete model of factors and effects related
to social media in class. We intended to bring together research on any of the three curriculum levels,
operationalised in aspects on school, teacher and student level (see Figure 1).
The answer to the first research question follows from the goals and considerations of teachers to
use social media in their teaching. Teachers use social media specifically to motivate students and to
improve teaching. The main goals reported for school leaders were improved communication with
the outside world and colleagues. Furthermore, school leaders use social media to promote social
learning and teacher professional development. They do so by mobilising early adopters and by
applying blended learning. This not only concerns improving ICT skills but also strengthening
teacher self-efficacy.
Considerations for using social media can be summarised as: reaching a wider audience, motivat-
ing students and improving transparency in (internal and external) communication, assessment and
evaluation. Another consideration was that students are already familiar with social media. However,
this led to the objection that social media belong in students’ leisure time. One condition at school
level is facilitation of teachers, especially organisational (i.e. time) and technical support.
Furthermore, teachers need support to develop their social media knowledge and skills. They
experience a lack of this support as a barrier. Finally, uncertainty regarding privacy and security,
lack of experience and a negative attitude towards social media or ICT in general are reported
barriers. These results confirm conclusions from earlier review studies (e.g. Henderson et al., 2013;
Minocha, 2009; Tess, 2013). The many barriers reported in the results of our review suggest that
much is to be gained by a systematic and profound elaboration upon the intended curriculum
regarding social media.
 TECHNOLOGY, PEDAGOGY AND EDUCATION 47

The second research question discussed the context and pedagogical use of social media in
classrooms. Facebook, in particular, was used, followed by Twitter and blogs. Teachers perceive their
own role as coach that supports students in their learning. Social media are used for collaborative
learning, for active engagement with the course content and to support metacognitive skills.
However, this last type of support is also perceived as conditional: a high level of self-regulation
among students leads to focused use of social media. This makes social media suitable for social
constructivist learning approaches (Ertmer & Newby, 1993).
Social media are used mainly in regular learning situations, where chosen applications are used as
an addition to or replacement of traditional curriculum materials. The purpose is to improve
communication, share knowledge and learn collaboratively. Also, interpersonal teacher–student
relations can be improved by social media. However, positive results on these aspects strongly
correlate with teachers’ actual behaviour on social media and their attitude towards these media and
ICT in general. This is in line with earlier research about teachers’ attitudes towards innovation
(Thurlings, Evers, & Vermeulen, 2015) and about considerations for ICT use among teachers (Van den
Beemt & Diepstraten, 2016).
The evidence for the outcomes, our third research question, is far from convincing. The results of
studies vary, just like the conclusions drawn from these results. Sometimes the belief of researchers
or the attitude of participating teachers leads to these varying results, which can also be seen as an
instance of the hidden curriculum (Edwards, 2015). Additionally, many studies refrained from being
explicit about the demographics of respondents, which only allowed us to draw less specific
conclusions. Furthermore, weak evidential power originates in perception studies and self-reports
(see for instance also Thurlings & den Brok, 2017), and is therefore ‘anecdotal’ (Hew & Cheung, 2013).
These perceptions and self-reports lead to statements about increasing motivation among students
or about improved learning results. Reported risk factors are for instance distractions caused by
social media and short attention spans among students. The central point of the evidential power is
diversity among students: differences in age, development, preferences for ICT or specific social
media, and in skills (see also Van den Beemt et al., 2010). This diversity is also apparent for teachers.
Most convincing is the use of social media in writing and language courses, which leads to better
results and motivation among students. For other domains, such as STEM or medical studies, the
included research showed less convincing results, regarding, for instance, specific pedagogical
activities. However, the general question, discussed in no single study in this review, is retention:
How persistent are learning results? In a similar tone, it can be questioned whether actively engaging
with course content can be achieved in other ways, without social media, possibly leading to even
better learning outcomes. Taken together, our review results suggest difficulties in making well-
considered and evidence-based choices for the pedagogical use of social media, because of poor
quality of studies and because of the large variety of results.
The last research question discusses the complete conceptual model. The relation between
conditions and outcomes regarding social media in classrooms remains unclear as a result of variety
in evidence. Rarely are cause and effect clearly pointed out: is Facebook a cause of lower grades, or
do students go online more often once they get lower grades? The context-dependency of studies
also influences this obscurity: executed in a specific course, and in a specific educational culture. This
hinders generalisations and determination of causality, even within specific domains such as STEM or
the social sciences. Nonetheless, facilitation (at school level) and attitude (teacher level) appear to be
related, for instance where professional development predicts integration of social media in class-
rooms. Barriers experienced by teachers for the pedagogical use of social media can be reduced with
the right policy and support. This serves as a positive influence on student–teacher relations, and
a better understanding by teachers of students’ attitudes towards social media. The implicit advice
for teachers appearing from our results is that teachers should learn to know what drives their
students.
48 A. VAN DEN BEEMT ET AL.

5. Conclusion
The questions about social media in class play at the interrelated levels of student, teacher and
school. This review showed that existing research repeatedly focused on one single aspect, without
paying attention to this interrelatedness. Future research on pedagogical uses of social media should
attend to the complexity of interrelated factors, this raising awareness of hidden positions and
curriculum aspects. Furthermore, cause and effect should clearly and objectively be identified to
determine the effectiveness of specific pedagogical uses of social media in classrooms, while taking
into account content domains. This implies mixed methods including analyses of, for instance,
learning results, rather than relying on self-reports and perception surveys.
Our review resulted in an integrated model that gives educational practice starting points to
formulate considerations, while taking into account the interrelatedness of student, teacher and
school. As such, we contribute to knowledge and understanding about the educational use of social
media in teaching and in supporting educational processes. This, in turn, leads to practical advice
and considerations that can help schools and teachers to enrich their education with social media.
This advice can serve as grounding for practice-based organisations such as the International Society
for Technology in Education that aim to solve problems in education.

School

(1) Apply social media to reach a broader audience and to increase transparency in internal and
external communication.
(2) Include social media in policy on curriculum materials and educational vision as this promotes
the use of social media as learning tools.
(3) Develop focused policy and support to diminish the barriers experienced by teachers. Facilitate
teachers especially in technical support and in time to work on their social media skills.
(4) Consider diversity among teachers in experience, skills and values regarding social media.
(5) Mobilise early adopters of social media within the school.
(6) Support the development of knowledge and skills within teacher teams, small informal
groups of teachers.

Teacher

(1) Develop social media skills to be taken seriously by pupils and students.
(2) Scrutinise your own experiences, skills and values regarding social media to understand
barriers to pedagogical use of this technology.
(3) Facilitate students with clear, instruction-focused goals while adapting to their social and
educational needs. Effective learning goals are related to communication, sharing knowledge
and collaborative learning.
(4) Social media are suitable for social constructivist approaches to learning. Central is active
engagement with content, for instance by producing digital content. The teacher’s role is
coaching (Wopereis, Sloep, & Poortman, 2010).
(5) Use social media as a tool for collaborative learning. For instance, by enabling students to
have informal discussions about assignments.
(6) Be purposefully present on social media, to support groups of students as an online commu-
nity. This can strengthen interpersonal teacher–student relations.
(7) Present social media as optional, and offer an alternative for reluctant students (Chen & Bryer,
2012). Social media are an addition that should not stand in the way of instruction.
(8) Promote students’ formative feedback on (improved) use of social media to collaborate and
share knowledge. This promotes reflection on learning with social media.
 TECHNOLOGY, PEDAGOGY AND EDUCATION 49

Student

(1) Examine the status quo: not all students perceive social media as tools for learning. Consider
diversity in experience, skills and values regarding social media.
(2) Students use social media to communicate rather than develop or share information.
(3) Social media are not a panacea: learning results (i.e. grades) do not increase automatically.
Social media in the classroom can improve indirect learning outcomes, such as collaboration,
communication or motivation.
(4) Metacognitive skills are a prerequisite for a focused use of social media. However, this use also
increases these skills.
(5) Not all students have sufficient social media knowledge and skills. Explain aspects of security
and privacy (Chen & Bryer, 2012).

Are social media in class a burden or blessing? This appears to be connected to school culture,
attitudes of teachers and students regarding social media, support and teacher professional devel-
opment, clear learning goals and a clear role for social media in the curriculum.

Acknowledgments
The authors thank Anouk van der Lee for her contribution to the review project.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
The work was supported by The Netherlands Initiative for Education Research (NRO) [grant number 405-15-719].

Notes on contributors
Antoine Van Den Beemt works as an associate professor at Eindhoven School of Education, the teacher training institute
of Eindhoven University of Technology. His research revolves around digital pedagogies, especially for STEM education.
He specifically puts emphasis on networked learning and learning analytics.
Marieke Thurlings works as an assistant professor at Eindhoven School of Education, the teacher training institute of
Eindhoven University of Technology. Her expertise lies in collaborative teacher professional development, STEM
education and systematic literature reviews. She has published in several journals, such as Review of Educational
Research and Australasian Journal of Educational Technology.
Myrthe Willems holds a Master’s degree in educational research and worked as a researcher at Eindhoven School of
Education, and as an assessment expert at the Dutch institute for assessment development (Cito). She currently works
as an assessment consultant at Summa College, Eindhoven, the Netherlands.

ORCID
Antoine Van Den Beemt http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9594-6568
Marieke Thurlings http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7447-9750

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Journal of Technology in Behavioral Science (2020) 5:245–257
https://doi.org/10.1007/s41347-020-00134-x
Social Media and Mental Health: Benefits, Risks, and Opportunities
for Research and Practice
John A. Naslund 1 & Ameya Bondre 2 & John Torous 3 & Kelly A. Aschbrenner 4
Received: 19 October 2019 / Revised: 24 February 2020 / Accepted: 17 March 2020 / Published online: 20 April 2020
# Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Introduction
Social media has become a prominent fixture in the lives of
many individuals facing the challenges of mental illness.
Social media refers broadly to web and mobile platforms that
allow individuals to connect with others within a virtual net-
work (such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, or
LinkedIn), where they can share, co-create, or exchange var-
ious forms of digital content, including information, mes-
sages, photos, or videos (Ahmed et al. 2019). Studies have
reported that individuals living with a range of mental disor-
ders, including depression, psychotic disorders, or other se-
vere mental illnesses, use social media platforms at compara-
ble rates as the general population, with use ranging from
about 70% among middle-age and older individuals to up-
wards of 97% among younger individuals (Aschbrenner
et al. 2018b; Birnbaum et al. 2017b; Brunette et al. 2019;
Naslund et al. 2016). Other exploratory studies have found
that many of these individuals with mental illness appear to
turn to social media to share their personal experiences, seek
information about their mental health and treatment options,
and give and receive support from others facing similar mental
health challenges (Bucci et al. 2019; Naslund et al. 2016b).
Across the USA and globally, very few people living with
mental illness have access to adequate mental health services
(Patel et al. 2018). The wide reach and near ubiquitous use of
social media platforms may afford novel opportunities to
* John A. Naslund
John_Naslund@hms.harvard.edu
1
Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical
School, 641 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA
2
Digital Mental Health Research Consultant, Mumbai, India
3
Division of Digital Psychiatry, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical
Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
4
Department of Psychiatry, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth,
Lebanon, NH, USA
address these shortfalls in existing mental health care, by en-
hancing the quality, availability, and reach of services. Recent
studies have explored patterns of social media use, impact of
social media use on mental health and wellbeing, and the
potential to leverage the popularity and interactive features
of social media to enhance the delivery of interventions.
However, there remains uncertainty regarding the risks and
potential harms of social media for mental health (Orben and
Przybylski 2019) and how best to weigh these concerns
against potential benefits.
In this commentary, we summarized current research on the
use of social media among individuals with mental illness,
with consideration of the impact of social media on mental
wellbeing, as well as early efforts using social media for de-
livery of evidence-based programs for addressing mental
health problems. We searched for recent peer reviewed publi-
cations in Medline and Google Scholar using the search terms
“mental health” or “mental illness” and “social media,” and
searched the reference lists of recent reviews and other rele-
vant studies. We reviewed the risks, potential harms, and nec-
essary safety precautions with using social media for mental
health. Overall, our goal was to consider the role of social
media as a potentially viable intervention platform for offering
support to persons with mental disorders, promoting engage-
ment and retention in care, and enhancing existing mental
health services, while balancing the need for safety. Given this
broad objective, we did not perform a systematic search of the
literature and we did not apply specific inclusion criteria based
on study design or type of mental disorder.
Social Media Use and Mental Health
In 2020, there are an estimated 3.8 billion social media users
worldwide, representing half the global population (We Are
Social 2020). Recent studies have shown that individuals with
mental disorders are increasingly gaining access to and using
mobile devices, such as smartphones (Firth et al. 2015; Glick
et al. 2016; Torous et al. 2014a, b). Similarly, there is mounting
246
evidence showing high rates of social media use among indi-
viduals with mental disorders, including studies looking at en-
gagement with these popular platforms across diverse settings
and disorder types. Initial studies from 2015 found that nearly
half of a sample of psychiatric patients were social media users,
with greater use among younger individuals (Trefflich et al.
2015), while 47% of inpatients and outpatients with schizophre-
nia reported using social media, of which 79% reported at least
once-a-week usage of social media websites (Miller et al.
2015). Rates of social media use among psychiatric populations
have increased in recent years, as reflected in a study with data
from 2017 showing comparable rates of social media use (ap-
proximately 70%) among individuals with serious mental ill-
ness in treatment as compared with low-income groups from
the general population (Brunette et al. 2019).
Similarly, among individuals with serious mental illness
receiving community-based mental health services, a recent
study found equivalent rates of social media use as the general
population, even exceeding 70% of participants (Naslund
et al. 2016). Comparable findings were demonstrated among
middle-age and older individuals with mental illness
accessing services at peer support agencies, where 72% of
respondents reported using social media (Aschbrenner et al.
2018b). Similar results, with 68% of those with first episode
psychosis using social media daily were reported in another
study (Abdel-Baki et al. 2017).
Individuals who self-identified as having a schizophrenia
spectrum disorder responded to a survey shared through the
National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI) and reported that
visiting social media sites was one of their most common
activities when using digital devices, taking up roughly 2 h
each day (Gay et al. 2016). For adolescents and young adults
ages 12 to 21 with psychotic disorders and mood disorders,
over 97% reported using social media, with average use ex-
ceeding 2.5 h per day (Birnbaum et al. 2017b). Similarly, in a
sample of adolescents ages 13–18 recruited from community
mental health centers, 98% reported using social media, with
YouTube as the most popular platform, followed by Instagram
and Snapchat (Aschbrenner et al. 2019).
Research has also explored the motivations for using social
media as well as the perceived benefits of interacting on these
platforms among individuals with mental illness. In the sec-
tions that follow (see Table 1 for a summary), we consider
three potentially unique features of interacting and connecting
with others on social media that may offer benefits for indi-
viduals living with mental illness. These include: (1) Facilitate
social interaction; (2) Access to a peer support network; and
(3) Promote engagement and retention in services.
Facilitate Social Interaction
Social media platforms offer near continuous opportunities to
connect and interact with others, regardless of time of day or
J. technol. behav. sci. (2020) 5:245–257
geographic location. This on demand ease of communication
may be especially important for facilitating social interaction
among individuals with mental disorders experiencing diffi-
culties interacting in face-to-face settings. For example, im-
paired social functioning is a common deficit in schizophrenia
spectrum disorders, and social media may facilitate commu-
nication and interacting with others for these individuals
(Torous and Keshavan 2016). This was suggested in one study
where participants with schizophrenia indicated that social
media helped them to interact and socialize more easily
(Miller et al. 2015). Like other online communication, the
ability to connect with others anonymously may be an impor-
tant feature of social media, especially for individuals living
with highly stigmatizing health conditions (Berger et al.
2005), such as serious mental disorders (Highton-
Williamson et al. 2015).
Studies have found that individuals with serious mental
disorders (Spinzy et al. 2012) as well as young adults with
mental illness (Gowen et al. 2012) appear to form online re-
lationships and connect with others on social media as often as
social media users from the general population. This is an
important observation because individuals living with serious
mental disorders typically have few social contacts in the
offline world and also experience high rates of loneliness
(Badcock et al. 2015; Giacco et al. 2016). Among individuals
receiving publicly funded mental health services who use so-
cial media, nearly half (47%) reported using these platforms at
least weekly to feel less alone (Brusilovskiy et al. 2016). In
another study of young adults with serious mental illness,
most indicated that they used social media to help feel less
isolated (Gowen et al. 2012). Interestingly, more frequent use
of social media among a sample of individuals with serious
mental illness was associated with greater community partic-
ipation, measured as participation in shopping, work, religious
activities, or visiting friends and family, as well as greater civic
engagement, reflected as voting in local elections
(Brusilovskiy et al. 2016).
Emerging research also shows that young people with
moderate to severe depressive symptoms appear to prefer
communicating on social media rather than in-person
(Rideout and Fox 2018), while other studies have found that
some individuals may prefer to seek help for mental health
concerns online rather than through in-person encounters
(Batterham and Calear 2017). In a qualitative study, partici-
pants with schizophrenia described greater anonymity, the
ability to discover that other people have experienced similar
health challenges and reducing fears through greater access to
information as important motivations for using the Internet to
seek mental health information (Schrank et al. 2010). Because
social media does not require the immediate responses neces-
sary in face-to-face communication, it may overcome deficits
with social interaction due to psychotic symptoms that typi-
cally adversely affect face-to-face conversations (Docherty
J. technol. behav. sci. (2020) 5:245–257 247

Table 1 Summary of potential benefits and challenges with social media for mental health

Features of social Examples Studies

media

Benefits
1) Facilitate social • Online interactions may be easier for individuals with (Batterham and Calear 2017; Brusilovskiy et al. 2016; Gowen
interaction impaired social functioning and facing symptoms et al. 2012; Highton-Williamson et al. 2015; Indian and
• Anonymity can help individuals with stigmatizing conditions Grieve 2014; Schrank et al. 2010; Spinzy et al. 2012; Torous
connect with others and Keshavan 2016)
• Young adults with mental illness appear to commonly form
online relationships
• Social media use in individuals with serious mental
illness may be associated with greater community and civic
engagement
• Individuals with depressive symptoms may prefer
communicating on social media than in-person
• Online conversations do not require immediate responses or
non-verbal cues
2) Access to peer • Online peer support can help to seek information, discuss (Bauer et al. 2013; Berry et al. 2017; Bucci et al. 2019; Chang
support network symptoms and medication, share experiences, learn to cope 2009; Haker et al. 2005; Highton-Williamson et al. 2015;
and facilitate self-disclosure Naslund et al. 2014; 2017; Vayreda and Antaki 2009)
• Individuals with mental disorders can establish new
relationships, feel less alone or reconnect with people
• Various support patterns are noted in these networks (e.g.
“informational,” “esteem,” “network,” and “emotional”)
3) Promote • Individuals with mental disorders can connect with care (Alvarez-Jimenez et al. 2013, 2018, 2019; Aschbrenner et al.
engagement and providers and access evidence-based services 2018a, 2016b; Biagianti et al. 2018; Birnbaum et al. 2017b;
retention in • Online peer support augments existing interventions to Gleeson et al. 2017; Lal et al. 2018; Naslund et al. 2016b,
services improve client engagement and compliance 2018; Schlosser et al. 2016, 2018)
• Peer networks increase social connectedness and
empowerment during recovery
• Interactive peer-to-peer features of social media appear bene-
ficial for social functioning
• Mobile apps offer potential to monitor symptoms, prevent
relapses and help users set goals
• Digital peer-based interventions are feasible and acceptable
for targeting fitness and weight loss in people with mental
disorders
• Online networks can extend support to caregivers of those
with mental disorders
Challenges
1) Impact on • Studies show increased risk of exposure to harm, social (Andreassen et al. 2016; Berry et al. 2018; Best et al. 2014;
symptoms isolation, depressive symptoms and bullying Feinstein et al. 2013; Kross et al. 2013; Lin et al. 2016;
• Social comparison pressure and social isolation after being Mittal et al. 2007; Stiglic and Viner 2019; Twenge and
rejected on social media is a potential concern Campbell 2018; Twenge et al. 2018; Vannucci et al. 2017;
• More frequent visits and use of a larger number of social Woods and Scott 2016)
media platforms has been linked with greater depressive
symptoms, anxiety and risk of suicide
• Social media replaces in-person interactions and may con-
tribute to greater loneliness and worsening of existing mental
health symptoms
2) Facing hostile • Cyberbullying is associated with increased depressive and (Hamm et al. 2015; Machmutow et al. 2012; Rideout and Fox
interactions anxiety symptoms 2018; Ybarra 2004)
• Greater odds of online harassment in individuals with major
depressive symptoms than those with mild or no symptoms
3) Consequences for • Risks pertain to privacy, confidentiality, and potential (Moorhead et al. 2013; Naslund and Aschbrenner 2019; Torous
daily life consequences of disclosing personal health information and Keshavan 2016; Ventola 2014)
• Misleading information or conflicts of interest, when the
platforms promote popular content
• Individuals have concerns about privacy, threats to
employment, stigma and being judged, adverse impact on
relationships and facing online hostility
248
et al. 1996). Online social interactions may not require the use
of non-verbal cues, particularly in the initial stages of interac-
tion (Kiesler et al. 1984), with interactions being more fluid
and within the control of users, thereby overcoming possible
social anxieties linked to in-person interaction (Indian and
Grieve 2014). Furthermore, many individuals with serious
mental disorders can experience symptoms including passive
social withdrawal, blunted affect, and attentional impairment,
as well as active social avoidance due to hallucinations or
other concerns (Hansen et al. 2009), thus potentially reinforc-
ing the relative advantage, as perceived by users, of using
social media over in person conversations.
Access to a Peer Support Network
There is growing recognition about the role that social media
channels could play in enabling peer support (Bucci et al.
2019; Naslund et al. 2016b), referred to as a system of mutual
giving and receiving where individuals who have endured the
difficulties of mental illness can offer hope, friendship, and
support to others facing similar challenges (Davidson et al.
2006; Mead et al. 2001). Initial studies exploring use of online
self-help forums among individuals with serious mental ill-
nesses have found that individuals with schizophrenia ap-
peared to use these forums for self-disclosure and sharing
personal experiences, in addition to providing or requesting
information, describing symptoms, or discussing medication
(Haker et al. 2005), while users with bipolar disorder reported
using these forums to ask for help from others about their
illness (Vayreda and Antaki 2009). More recently, in a review
of online social networking in people with psychosis,
Highton-Williamson et al. (2015) highlight that an important
purpose of such online connections was to establish new
friendships, pursue romantic relationships, maintain existing
relationships or reconnect with people, and seek online peer
support from others with lived experience (Highton-
Williamson et al. 2015).
Online peer support among individuals with mental illness
has been further elaborated in various studies. In a content
analysis of comments posted to YouTube by individuals
who self-identified as having a serious mental illness, there
appeared to be opportunities to feel less alone, provide hope,
find support and learn through mutual reciprocity, and share
coping strategies for day-to-day challenges of living with a
mental illness (Naslund et al. 2014). In another study, Chang
(2009) delineated various communication patterns in an on-
line psychosis peer-support group (Chang 2009). Specifically,
different forms of support emerged, including “informational
support” about medication use or contacting mental health
providers, “esteem support” involving positive comments for
encouragement, “network support” for sharing similar experi-
ences, and “emotional support” to express understanding of a
peer’s situation and offer hope or confidence (Chang 2009).
J. technol. behav. sci. (2020) 5:245–257
Bauer et al. (2013) reported that the main interest in online
self-help forums for patients with bipolar disorder was to share
emotions with others, allow exchange of information, and
benefit by being part of an online social group (Bauer et al.
2013).
For individuals who openly discuss mental health problems
on Twitter, a study by Berry et al. (2017) found that this served
as an important opportunity to seek support and to hear about
the experiences of others (Berry et al. 2017). In a survey of
social media users with mental illness, respondents reported
that sharing personal experiences about living with mental
illness and opportunities to learn about strategies for coping
with mental illness from others were important reasons for
using social media (Naslund et al. 2017). A computational
study of mental health awareness campaigns on Twitter pro-
vides further support with inspirational posts and tips being
the most shared (Saha et al. 2019). Taken together, these stud-
ies offer insights about the potential for social media to facil-
itate access to an informal peer support network, though more
research is necessary to examine how these online interactions
may impact intentions to seek care, illness self-management,
and clinically meaningful outcomes in offline contexts.
Promote Engagement and Retention in Services
Many individuals living with mental disorders have expressed
interest in using social media platforms for seeking mental
health information (Lal et al. 2018), connecting with mental
health providers (Birnbaum et al. 2017b), and accessing
evidence-based mental health services delivered over social
media specifically for coping with mental health symptoms
or for promoting overall health and wellbeing (Naslund et al.
2017). With the widespread use of social media among indi-
viduals living with mental illness combined with the potential
to facilitate social interaction and connect with supportive
peers, as summarized above, it may be possible to leverage
the popular features of social media to enhance existing
mental health programs and services. A recent review by
Biagianti et al. (2018) found that peer-to-peer support ap-
peared to offer feasible and acceptable ways to augment dig-
ital mental health interventions for individuals with psychotic
disorders by specifically improving engagement, compliance,
and adherence to the interventions and may also improve per-
ceived social support (Biagianti et al. 2018).
Among digital programs that have incorporated peer-to-
peer social networking consistent with popular features on
social media platforms, a pilot study of the HORYZONS on-
line psychosocial intervention demonstrated significant reduc-
tions in depression among patients with first episode psycho-
sis (Alvarez-Jimenez et al. 2013). Importantly, the majority of
participants (95%) in this study engaged with the peer-to-peer
networking feature of the program, with many reporting in-
creases in perceived social connectedness and empowerment
J. technol. behav. sci. (2020) 5:245–257
in their recovery process (Alvarez-Jimenez et al. 2013). This
moderated online social therapy program is now being evalu-
ated as part of a large randomized controlled trial for main-
taining treatment effects from first episode psychosis services
(Alvarez-Jimenez et al. 2019).
Other early efforts have demonstrated that use of digital
environments with the interactive peer-to-peer features of so-
cial media can enhance social functioning and wellbeing in
young people at high risk of psychosis (Alvarez-Jimenez et al.
2018). There has also been a recent emergence of several
mobile apps to support symptom monitoring and relapse pre-
vention in psychotic disorders. Among these apps, the devel-
opment of PRIME (Personalized Real-time Intervention for
Motivational Enhancement) has involved working closely
with young people with schizophrenia to ensure that the de-
sign of the app has the look and feel of mainstream social
media platforms, as opposed to existing clinical tools
(Schlosser et al. 2016). This unique approach to the design
of the app is aimed at promoting engagement and ensuring
that the app can effectively improve motivation and function-
ing through goal setting and promoting better quality of life of
users with schizophrenia (Schlosser et al. 2018).
Social media platforms could also be used to promote en-
gagement and participation in in-person services delivered
through community mental health settings. For example, the
peer-based lifestyle intervention called PeerFIT targets weight
loss and improved fitness among individuals living with serious
mental illness through a combination of in-person lifestyle clas-
ses, exercise groups, and use of digital technologies
(Aschbrenner et al. 2016b, c). The intervention holds tremen-
dous promise as lack of support is one of the largest barriers
towards exercise in patients with serious mental illness (Firth
et al. 2016), and it is now possible to use social media to counter
such. Specifically, in PeerFIT, a private Facebook group is
closely integrated into the program to offer a closed platform
where participants can connect with the lifestyle coaches, ac-
cess intervention content, and support or encourage each other
as they work towards their lifestyle goals (Aschbrenner et al.
2016a; Naslund et al. 2016a). To date, this program has dem-
onstrated preliminary effectiveness for meaningfully reducing
cardiovascular risk factors that contribute to early mortality in
this patient group (Aschbrenner, Naslund, Shevenell, Kinney,
et al., 2016), while the Facebook component appears to have
increased engagement in the program, while allowing partici-
pants who were unable to attend in-person sessions due to other
health concerns or competing demands to remain connected
with the program (Naslund et al. 2018). This lifestyle interven-
tion is currently being evaluated in a randomized controlled trial
enrolling young adults with serious mental illness from real
world community mental health services settings
(Aschbrenner et al. 2018a).
These examples highlight the promise of incorporating the
features of popular social media into existing programs, which
249
may offer opportunities to safely promote engagement and
program retention, while achieving improved clinical out-
comes. This is an emerging area of research, as evidenced
by several important effectiveness trials underway (Alvarez-
Jimenez et al. 2019; Aschbrenner et al. 2018a), including ef-
forts to leverage online social networking to support family
caregivers of individuals receiving first episode psychosis ser-
vices (Gleeson et al. 2017).
Challenges with Social Media for Mental
Health
The science on the role of social media for engaging persons
with mental disorders needs a cautionary note on the effects of
social media usage on mental health and wellbeing, particu-
larly in adolescents and young adults. While the risks and
harms of social media are frequently covered in the popular
press and mainstream news reports, careful consideration of
the research in this area is necessary. In a review of 43 studies
in young people, many benefits of social media were cited,
including increased self-esteem and opportunities for self-
disclosure (Best et al. 2014). Yet, reported negative effects
were an increased exposure to harm, social isolation, depres-
sive symptoms, and bullying (Best et al. 2014). In the sections
that follow (see Table 1 for a summary), we consider three
major categories of risk related to use of social media and
mental health. These include: (1) Impact on symptoms; (2)
Facing hostile interactions; and (3) Consequences for daily
life.
Impact on Symptoms
Studies consistently highlight that use of social media, espe-
cially heavy use and prolonged time spent on social media
platforms, appears to contribute to increased risk for a variety
of mental health symptoms and poor wellbeing, especially
among young people (Andreassen et al. 2016; Kross et al.
2013; Woods and Scott 2016). This may partly be driven by
the detrimental effects of screen time on mental health, includ-
ing increased severity of anxiety and depressive symptoms,
which have been well documented (Stiglic and Viner 2019).
Recent studies have reported negative effects of social media
use on mental health of young people, including social com-
parison pressure with others and greater feeling of social iso-
lation after being rejected by others on social media (Rideout
and Fox 2018). In a study of young adults, it was found that
negative comparisons with others on Facebook contributed to
risk of rumination and subsequent increases in depression
symptoms (Feinstein et al. 2013). Still, the cross-sectional
nature of many screen time and mental health studies makes
it challenging to reach causal inferences (Orben and
Przybylski 2019).
250
Quantity of social media use is also an important factor, as
highlighted in a survey of young adults ages 19 to 32, where
more frequent visits to social media platforms each week were
correlated with greater depressive symptoms (Lin et al. 2016).
More time spent using social media is also associated with
greater symptoms of anxiety (Vannucci et al. 2017). The ac-
tual number of platforms accessed also appears to contribute
to risk as reflected in another national survey of young adults
where use of a large number of social media platforms was
associated with negative impact on mental health (Primack
et al. 2017). Among survey respondents using between 7
and 11 different social media platforms compared with re-
spondents using only 2 or fewer platforms, there were 3 times
greater odds of having high levels of depressive symptoms
and a 3.2 times greater odds of having high levels of anxiety
symptoms (Primack et al. 2017).
Many researchers have postulated that worsening mental
health attributed to social media use may be because social
media replaces face-to-face interactions for young people
(Twenge and Campbell 2018) and may contribute to greater
loneliness (Bucci et al. 2019) and negative effects on other
aspects of health and wellbeing (Woods and Scott 2016).
One nationally representative survey of US adolescents found
that among respondents who reported more time accessing
media such as social media platforms or smartphone devices,
there were significantly greater depressive symptoms and in-
creased risk of suicide when compared with adolescents who
reported spending more time on non-screen activities, such as
in-person social interaction or sports and recreation activities
(Twenge et al. 2018). For individuals living with more severe
mental illnesses, the effects of social media on psychiatric
symptoms have received less attention. One study found that
participation in chat rooms may contribute to worsening
symptoms in young people with psychotic disorders (Mittal
et al. 2007), while another study of patients with psychosis
found that social media use appeared to predict low mood
(Berry et al. 2018). These studies highlight a clear relationship
between social media use and mental health that may not be
present in general population studies (Orben and Przybylski
2019) and emphasize the need to explore how social media
may contribute to symptom severity and whether protective
factors may be identified to mitigate these risks.
Facing Hostile Interactions
Popular social media platforms can create potential situations
where individuals may be victimized by negative comments
or posts. Cyberbullying represents a form of online aggression
directed towards specific individuals, such as peers or ac-
quaintances, which is perceived to be most harmful when
compared with random hostile comments posted online
(Hamm et al. 2015). Importantly, cyberbullying on social me-
dia consistently shows harmful impact on mental health in the
J. technol. behav. sci. (2020) 5:245–257
form of increased depressive symptoms as well as worsening
of anxiety symptoms, as evidenced in a review of 36 studies
among children and young people (Hamm et al. 2015).
Furthermore, cyberbullying disproportionately impacts fe-
males as reflected in a national survey of adolescents in the
USA, where females were twice as likely to be victims of
cyberbullying compared with males (Alhajji et al. 2019).
Most studies report cross-sectional associations between
cyberbullying and symptoms of depression or anxiety
(Hamm et al. 2015), though one longitudinal study in
Switzerland found that cyberbullying contributed to signifi-
cantly greater depression over time (Machmutow et al. 2012).
For youth ages 10 to 17 who reported major depressive
symptomatology, there were over 3 times greater odds of fac-
ing online harassment in the last year compared with youth
who reported mild or no depressive symptoms (Ybarra 2004).
Similarly, in a 2018 national survey of young people, respon-
dents ages 14 to 22 with moderate to severe depressive symp-
toms were more likely to have had negative experiences when
using social media and, in particular, were more likely to re-
port having faced hostile comments or being “trolled” from
others when compared with respondents without depressive
symptoms (31% vs. 14%) (Rideout and Fox 2018). As these
studies depict risks for victimization on social media and the
correlation with poor mental health, it is possible that individ-
uals living with mental illness may also experience greater
hostility online compared to individuals without mental ill-
ness. This would be consistent with research showing greater
risk of hostility, including increased violence and discrimina-
tion, directed towards individuals living with mental illness in
in-person contexts, especially targeted at those with severe
mental illnesses (Goodman et al. 1999).
A computational study of mental health awareness cam-
paigns on Twitter reported that while stigmatizing content
was rare, it was actually the most spread (re-tweeted) demon-
strating that harmful content can travel quickly on social me-
dia (Saha et al. 2019). Another study was able to map the
spread of social media posts about the Blue Whale
Challenge, an alleged game promoting suicide, over Twitter,
YouTube, Reddit, Tumblr, and other forums across 127 coun-
tries (Sumner et al. 2019). These findings show that it is crit-
ical to monitor the actual content of social media posts, such as
determining whether content is hostile or promotes harm to
self or others. This is pertinent because existing research
looking at duration of exposure cannot account for the impact
of specific types of content on mental health and is insufficient
to fully understand the effects of using these platforms on
mental health.
Consequences for Daily Life
The ways in which individuals use social media can also im-
pact their offline relationships and everyday activities. To
J. technol. behav. sci. (2020) 5:245–257
date, reports have described risks of social media use
pertaining to privacy, confidentiality, and unintended conse-
quences of disclosing personal health information online
(Torous and Keshavan 2016). Additionally, concerns have
been raised about poor quality or misleading health informa-
tion shared on social media and that social media users may
not be aware of misleading information or conflicts of interest
especially when the platforms promote popular content re-
gardless of whether it is from a trustworthy source
(Moorhead et al. 2013; Ventola 2014). For persons living with
mental illness, there may be additional risks from using social
media. A recent study that specifically explored the perspec-
tives of social media users with serious mental illnesses, in-
cluding participants with schizophrenia spectrum disorders,
bipolar disorder, or major depression, found that over one
third of participants expressed concerns about privacy when
using social media (Naslund and Aschbrenner 2019). The
reported risks of social media use were directly related to
many aspects of everyday life, including concerns about
threats to employment, fear of stigma and being judged, im-
pact on personal relationships, and facing hostility or being
hurt (Naslund and Aschbrenner 2019). While few studies have
specifically explored the dangers of social media use from the
perspectives of individuals living with mental illness, it is
important to recognize that use of these platforms may con-
tribute to risks that extend beyond worsening symptoms and
that can affect different aspects of daily life.
Discussion
In this commentary, we considered ways in which social me-
dia may yield benefits for individuals living with mental ill-
ness, while contrasting these with the possible harms. Studies
reporting on the threats of social media for individuals with
mental illness are mostly cross-sectional, making it difficult to
draw conclusions about direction of causation. However, the
risks are potentially serious. These risks should be carefully
considered in discussions pertaining to use of social media and
the broader use of digital mental health technologies, as ave-
nues for mental health promotion or for supporting access to
evidence-based programs or mental health services. At this
point, it would be premature to view the benefits of social
media as outweighing the possible harms, when it is clear
from the studies summarized here that social media use can
have negative effects on mental health symptoms, can poten-
tially expose individuals to hurtful content and hostile interac-
tions, and can result in serious consequences for daily life,
including threats to employment and personal relationships.
Despite these risks, it is also necessary to recognize that indi-
viduals with mental illness will continue to use social media
given the ease of accessing these platforms and the immense
popularity of online social networking. With this in mind, it
251
may be ideal to raise awareness about these possible risks so
that individuals can implement necessary safeguards, while
highlighting that there could also be benefits. Being aware of
the risks is an essential first step, before then recognizing that
use of these popular platforms could contribute to some bene-
fits like finding meaningful interactions with others, engaging
with peer support networks, and accessing information and
services.
To capitalize on the widespread use of social media and to
achieve the promise that these platforms may hold for
supporting the delivery of targeted mental health interven-
tions, there is need for continued research to better understand
how individuals living with mental illness use social media.
Such efforts could inform safety measures and also encourage
use of social media in ways that maximize potential benefits
while minimizing risk of harm. It will be important to recog-
nize how gender and race contribute to differences in use of
social media for seeking mental health information or
accessing interventions, as well as differences in how social
media might impact mental wellbeing. For example, a nation-
al survey of 14- to 22-year olds in the USA found that female
respondents were more likely to search online for information
about depression or anxiety and to try to connect with other
people online who share similar mental health concerns when
compared with male respondents (Rideout and Fox 2018). In
the same survey, there did not appear to be any differences
between racial or ethnic groups in social media use for seeking
mental health information (Rideout and Fox 2018). Social
media use also appears to have a differential impact on mental
health and emotional wellbeing between females and males
(Booker et al. 2018), highlighting the need to explore unique
experiences between gender groups to inform tailored pro-
grams and services. Research shows that lesbian, gay, bisex-
ual, or transgender individuals frequently use social media for
searching for health information and may be more likely com-
pared with heterosexual individuals to share their own person-
al health experiences with others online (Rideout and Fox
2018). Less is known about use of social media for seeking
support for mental health concerns among gender minorities,
though this is an important area for further investigation as
these individuals are more likely to experience mental health
problems and online victimization when compared with het-
erosexual individuals (Mereish et al. 2019).
Similarly, efforts are needed to explore the relationship
between social media use and mental health among ethnic
and racial minorities. A recent study found that exposure to
traumatic online content on social media showing violence or
hateful posts directed at racial minorities contributed to in-
creases in psychological distress, PTSD symptoms, and de-
pression among African American and Latinx adolescents in
the USA (Tynes et al. 2019). These concerns are contrasted by
growing interest in the potential for new technologies includ-
ing social media to expand the reach of services to
252
underrepresented minority groups (Schueller et al. 2019).
Therefore, greater attention is needed to understanding the
perspectives of ethnic and racial minorities to inform effective
and safe use of social media for mental health promotion
efforts.
Research has found that individuals living with mental ill-
ness have expressed interest in accessing mental health ser-
vices through social media platforms. A survey of social me-
dia users with mental illness found that most respondents were
interested in accessing programs for mental health on social
media targeting symptom management, health promotion, and
support for communicating with health care providers and
interacting with the health system (Naslund et al. 2017).
Importantly, individuals with serious mental illness have also
emphasized that any mental health intervention on social me-
dia would need to be moderated by someone with adequate
training and credentials, would need to have ground rules and
ways to promote safety and minimize risks, and importantly,
would need to be free and easy to access.
An important strength with this commentary is that it com-
bines a range of studies broadly covering the topic of social
media and mental health. We have provided a summary of
recent evidence in a rapidly advancing field with the goal of
presenting unique ways that social media could offer benefits
for individuals with mental illness, while also acknowledging
the potentially serious risks and the need for further investiga-
tion. There are also several limitations with this commentary
that warrant consideration. Importantly, as we aimed to ad-
dress this broad objective, we did not conduct a systematic
review of the literature. Therefore, the studies reported here
are not exhaustive, and there may be additional relevant stud-
ies that were not included. Additionally, we only summarized
published studies, and as a result, any reports from the private
sector or websites from different organizations using social
media or other apps containing social media–like features
would have been omitted. Although, it is difficult to rigorous-
ly summarize work from the private sector, sometimes re-
ferred to as “gray literature,” because many of these projects
are unpublished and are likely selective in their reporting of
findings given the target audience may be shareholders or
consumers.
Another notable limitation is that we did not assess risk
of bias in the studies summarized in this commentary. We
found many studies that highlighted risks associated with
social media use for individuals living with mental illness;
however, few studies of programs or interventions report-
ed negative findings, suggesting the possibility that nega-
tive findings may go unpublished. This concern highlights
the need for a future more rigorous review of the literature
with careful consideration of bias and an accompanying
quality assessment. Most of the studies that we described
were from the USA, as well as from other higher income
settings such as Australia or the UK. Despite the global
J. technol. behav. sci. (2020) 5:245–257
reach of social media platforms, there is a dearth of re-
search on the impact of these platforms on the mental
health of individuals in diverse settings, as well as the
ways in which social media could support mental health
services in lower income countries where there is virtually
no access to mental health providers. Future research is
necessary to explore the opportunities and risks for social
media to support mental health promotion in low-income
and middle-income countries, especially as these coun-
tries face a disproportionate share of the global burden
of mental disorders, yet account for the majority of social
media users worldwide (Naslund et al. 2019).
Future Directions for Social Media and Mental
Health
As we consider future research directions, the near ubiq-
uitous social media use also yields new opportunities to
study the onset and manifestation of mental health symp-
toms and illness severity earlier than traditional clinical
assessments. There is an emerging field of research re-
ferred to as “digital phenotyping” aimed at capturing
how individuals interact with their digital devices, includ-
ing social media platforms, in order to study patterns of
illness and identify optimal time points for intervention
(Jain et al. 2015; Onnela and Rauch 2016). Given that
most people access social media via mobile devices, dig-
ital phenotyping and social media are closely related
(Torous et al. 2019). To date, the emergence of machine
learning, a powerful computational method involving sta-
tistical and mathematical algorithms (Shatte et al. 2019),
has made it possible to study large quantities of data cap-
tured from popular social media platforms such as Twitter
or Instagram to illuminate various features of mental
health (Manikonda and De Choudhury 2017; Reece
et al. 2017). Specifically, conversations on Twitter have
been analyzed to characterize the onset of depression (De
Choudhury et al. 2013) as well as detecting users’ mood
and affective states (De Choudhury et al. 2012), while
photos posted to Instagram can yield insights for
predicting depression (Reece and Danforth 2017). The
intersection of social media and digital phenotyping will
likely add new levels of context to social media use in the
near future.
Several studies have also demonstrated that when com-
pared with a control group, Twitter users with a self-
disclosed diagnosis of schizophrenia show unique online
communication patterns (Birnbaum et al. 2017a), including
more frequent discussion of tobacco use (Hswen et al.
2017), symptoms of depression and anxiety (Hswen et al.
2018b), and suicide (Hswen et al. 2018a). Another study
found that online disclosures about mental illness appeared
J. technol. behav. sci. (2020) 5:245–257
beneficial as reflected by fewer posts about symptoms follow-
ing self-disclosure (Ernala et al. 2017). Each of these exam-
ples offers early insights into the potential to leverage widely
available online data for better understanding the onset and
course of mental illness. It is possible that social media data
could be used to supplement additional digital data, such as
continuous monitoring using smartphone apps or smart
watches, to generate a more comprehensive “digital pheno-
type” to predict relapse and identify high-risk health behaviors
among individuals living with mental illness (Torous et al.
2019).
With research increasingly showing the valuable in-
sights that social media data can yield about mental health
states, greater attention to the ethical concerns with using
individual data in this way is necessary (Chancellor et al.
2019). For instance, data is typically captured from social
media platforms without the consent or awareness of users
(Bidargaddi et al. 2017), which is especially crucial when
the data relates to a socially stigmatizing health condition
such as mental illness (Guntuku et al. 2017). Precautions
are needed to ensure that data is not made identifiable in
ways that were not originally intended by the user who
posted the content as this could place an individual at risk
of harm or divulge sensitive health information (Webb
et al. 2017; Williams et al. 2017). Promising approaches
for minimizing these risks include supporting the partici-
pation of individuals with expertise in privacy, clinicians,
and the target individuals with mental illness throughout
the collection of data, development of predictive algo-
rithms, and interpretation of findings (Chancellor et al.
2019).
In recognizing that many individuals living with
mental illness use social media to search for information
about their mental health, it is possible that they may
also want to ask their clinicians about what they find
online to check if the information is reliable and trust-
worthy. Alternatively, many individuals may feel
embarrassed or reluctant to talk to their clinicians about
using social media to find mental health information out
of concerns of being judged or dismissed. Therefore,
mental health clinicians may be ideally positioned to
talk with their patients about using social media and
offer recommendations to promote safe use of these
sites while also respecting their patients’ autonomy and
personal motivations for using these popular platforms.
Given the gap in clinical knowledge about the impact of
social media on mental health, clinicians should be
aware of the many potential risks so that they can in-
form their patients while remaining open to the possi-
bility that their patients may also experience benefits
through use of these platforms. As awareness of these
risks grows, it may be possible that new protections will
be put in place by industry or through new policies that
253
will make the social media environment safer. It is hard
to estimate a number needed to treat or harm today
given the nascent state of research, which means the
patient and clinician need to weigh the choice on a
personal level. Thus, offering education and information
is an important first step in that process. As patients
increasingly show interest in accessing mental health
information or services through social media, it will be
necessary for health systems to recognize social media
as a potential avenue for reaching or offering support to
patients. This aligns with growing emphasis on the need
for greater integration of digital psychiatry, including
apps, smartphones, or wearable devices, into patient
care and clinical services through institution-wide initia-
tives and training clinical providers (Hilty et al. 2019).
Within a learning healthcare environment where research
and care are tightly intertwined and feedback between
both is rapid, the integration of digital technologies into
services may create new opportunities for advancing use
of social media for mental health.
Conclusion
As highlighted in this commentary, social media has become
an important part of the lives of many individuals living with
mental disorders. Many of these individuals use social media
to share their lived experiences with mental illness, to seek
support from others, and to search for information about treat-
ment recommendations, accessing mental health services and
coping with symptoms (Bucci et al. 2019; Highton-
Williamson et al. 2015; Naslund et al. 2016b). As the field
of digital mental health advances, the wide reach, ease of
access, and popularity of social media platforms could be used
to allow individuals in need of mental health services or facing
challenges of mental illness to access evidence-based treat-
ment and support. To achieve this end and to explore whether
social media platforms can advance efforts to close the gap in
available mental health services in the USA and globally, it
will be essential for researchers to work closely with clinicians
and with those affected by mental illness to ensure that possi-
ble benefits of using social media are carefully weighed
against anticipated risks.
Funding information Dr. Naslund is supported by a grant from the
National Institute of Mental Health (U19MH113211). Dr. Aschbrenner
is supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health
(1R01MH110965-01).
Compliance with Ethical Standards
Conflict of Interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of
interest.
254
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