Are Social Networking Sites Making Health Behavior Change Interventions More Effective? A Meta-Analytic Review

Abstract

The increasing popularity of social networking sites (SNSs) has drawn scholarly attention in recent years, and a large amount of efforts have been made in applying SNSs to health behavior change interventions. However, these interventions showed mixed results, with a large variance of effect sizes in Cohen’s d ranging from −1.17 to 1.28. To provide a better understanding of SNS-based interventions’ effectiveness, a meta-analysis of 21 studies examining the effects of health interventions using SNS was conducted. Results indicated that health behavior change interventions using SNS are effective in general, but the effects were moderated by health topic, methodological features, and participant features. Theoretical and practical implications of findings are discussed.

Notes

¹ The Q Statistics were not reported in the manuscript for conciseness, but are available upon request.

² According to Borenstein and colleagues (2009), fixed-effect model with categorical moderator assumes that all studies in one subgroup share a common effect size, while the mixed-effect model allows true variation of effects within the subgroups of studies.

³ The categorization of health topics was based on Healthy People 2020 at http://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topicsobjectives2020/default