IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/geronb/v74y2019i6p1020-1031..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Going Online to Stay Connected: Online Social Participation Buffers the Relationship Between Pain and Depression

Author

Listed:
  • Shannon AngMA
  • Tuo-Yu ChenPhD
  • Deborah CarrPhDDecision Editor

Abstract

ObjectivesMaintaining offline social participation (i.e., face-to-face social interaction) is key for healthy aging, but older adults who experience pain tend to restrict their social activity outside of the home. The onset of pain may set off a downward spiral where lowered social participation increases the risk of depression and vice versa. This study thus assesses whether online social participation (i.e., the use of online social network sites) moderates the effect of pain on depression, possibly functioning as a compensatory mechanism for reduced offline social participation for those in pain.MethodLogistic regression models with a lagged dependent variable were used with panel data from the National Health and Aging Trends Study. An interaction term was included to assess the moderating effect of online social participation.ResultsWe find that online social participation buffers the detrimental effect of pain on depression. However, the effect of pain on online social participation was not statistically significant.DiscussionFindings show that online social participation can alleviate the negative effects of pain on mental well-being, and suggest that online social participation can supplement attempts to maintain offline social participation in later life, especially for those whose social activity may be limited by pain.

Suggested Citation

  • Shannon AngMA & Tuo-Yu ChenPhD & Deborah CarrPhDDecision Editor, 2019. "Going Online to Stay Connected: Online Social Participation Buffers the Relationship Between Pain and Depression," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 74(6), pages 1020-1031.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:74:y:2019:i:6:p:1020-1031.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gby109
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. García-Prado, Ariadna & González, Paula & Rebollo-Sanz, Yolanda F., 2022. "Lockdown strictness and mental health effects among older populations in Europe," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 45(C).
    2. Huan Zhang & Hongyang Wang & Huiyu Yan & Xiaoyu Wang, 2021. "Impact of Internet Use on Mental Health among Elderly Individuals: A Difference-in-Differences Study Based on 2016–2018 CFPS Data," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(1), pages 1-13, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:74:y:2019:i:6:p:1020-1031.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.