Effects of Web-Based Social Connectedness on Older Adults' Depressive Symptoms: A Two-Wave Cross-Lagged Panel Study

Background: Depressive symptoms are the most prevalent mental health concern among older adults (possibly heightened during the COVID-19 pandemic), which raises questions about how such symptoms can be lowered in this population. Existing research shows that offline social connectedness is a protective factor against depression in older adults; however, it is unknown whether web-based social connectedness can have similar effects.

Objective: This study investigates whether social connectedness on a support website protects older adults against depressive symptoms over the course of a year, above and beyond the protective effect of offline social connectedness. The secondary aim is to determine whether older adults with increased depressive symptoms are more likely to engage in social connectedness on this website. Thus, we examine depressive symptoms as both an outcome and predictor of web-based social connectedness to fully understand the chain of causality among these variables. Finally, we compare web-based social connectedness with offline social connectedness in their ability to lower depressive symptoms among older adults.

Methods: A total of 197 adults aged 65 years or older were given access to a social support website, where they were able to communicate with each other via a discussion forum for a year. Participants' social connectedness on the web-based platform, conceptualized as message production and consumption, was measured using behavioral log data as the number of messages participants wrote and read, respectively, during the first 6 months (t) and the following 6 months (t) of the study. Participants self-reported their offline social connectedness as the number of people in their support networks, and they reported their depressive symptoms using the Patient Health Questionnaire-8 both at baseline (t) and at 12-month follow-up (t). To ascertain the flow of causality between these variables, we employed a cross-lagged panel design, in which all variables were measured at t and t.

Results: After controlling for the effect of offline support networks at t, web-based message consumption at t decreased older adults' depressive symptoms at t (β=-.11; P=.02), but web-based message production at t did not impact t depressive symptoms (β=.12; P=.34). Web-based message consumption had a larger effect (β=-.11; P=.02) than offline support networks (β=-.08; P=.03) in reducing older adults' depressive symptoms over time. Higher baseline depressive symptoms did not predict increased web-based message consumption (β=.12; P=.36) or production (β=.02; P=.43) over time.

Conclusions: The more messages older adults read on the web-based forum for the first 6 months of the study, the less depressed they felt at the 1-year follow-up, above and beyond the availability of offline support networks at baseline. This pinpoints the substantial potential of web-based communication to combat depressive symptoms in this vulnerable population.

International Registered Report Identifier (irrid): RR2-10.1186/s13063-015-0713-2.