Information and communication technology, educational attainment, and disparity in health information from one’s personal social network: The J-SHINE 2017 cross-sectional study

Previous studies suggested that accessibility to others with useful health information depends on one’s educational background. While Information and Communication Technology is thought to affect health information disparities, it remains unclear whether it widens or narrows them. We aimed to examine how four types of communication media—face-to-face/telephone, E-mail, LINE, social network service (SNS)—modify the association between educational background and accessibility to useful health information in the personal network of Japanese adults. We used data from the third-wave Japanese Study on Stratification, Health, Income, and Neighborhood (J-SHINE) survey conducted in 2017, which targeted middle-aged adults living in four municipalities within Japanese metropolitan areas. The results demonstrated that SNS use moderated the gap between educational backgrounds, suggesting that SNS can be an interventional leverage to close a health-related information gap between socioeconomic positions.