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Social Capital in Digitally Mediated Communities: Conditional Associations with Depressive Mood
1Soongsil University, Seoul, Korea. kbaek37@ssu.ac.kr.
Summary
Social capital is linked to higher depressive mood, but online community engagement, especially messenger services, can weaken this effect. Digital environments impact mental health outcomes of social participation.
Area of Science:
- Social Sciences
- Psychology
- Public Health
Background:
- Social capital, traditionally viewed as beneficial, may have complex associations with mental health.
- The role of online community environments in moderating the relationship between social capital and mental well-being is underexplored.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how different online community environments moderate the association between social capital and depressive mood.
- To examine the differential impact of messenger services, social networking services (SNS), and membership-based online communities.
Main Methods:
- Utilized data from the 2023 Korea Social Integration Survey (n=8,221).
- Measured social capital via participation in voluntary organizations and depressive mood using a single-item distress measure.
- Employed ordinary least squares regression with interaction terms to analyze moderation effects.
Main Results:
- Higher social capital was unexpectedly associated with higher depressive mood (b=0.327).
- Frequent messenger service use weakened the positive association between social capital and depressive mood (b=-0.084).
- Social networking service (SNS) use showed a smaller, conditional moderating effect (b=-0.042); membership-based communities did not significantly moderate.
Conclusions:
- The mental health impact of social participation is contingent on the organization of online and offline engagement.
- Relationally oriented digital environments, like messenger services, may buffer the emotional burden of extensive social participation.
- Public mental health research and interventions must consider digitally mediated community contexts.
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