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Support over Social Media among Socially Isolated Sexual and Gender Minority Youth in Rural U.S. during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Opportunities for Intervention Research

Sexual and gender minority (SGM) rural adolescents are at risk for higher levels of social isolation, a well-known risk factor for depression and other negative health outcomes. We qualitatively examined how rural SGM youth seek emotional and informational support, which are protective factors for s...

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Autores principales: Karim, Sana, Choukas-Bradley, Sophia, Radovic, Ana, Roberts, Savannah R., Maheux, Anne J., Escobar-Viera, César G.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9738510/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36497684
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph192315611
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author Karim, Sana
Choukas-Bradley, Sophia
Radovic, Ana
Roberts, Savannah R.
Maheux, Anne J.
Escobar-Viera, César G.
author_facet Karim, Sana
Choukas-Bradley, Sophia
Radovic, Ana
Roberts, Savannah R.
Maheux, Anne J.
Escobar-Viera, César G.
author_sort Karim, Sana
collection PubMed
description Sexual and gender minority (SGM) rural adolescents are at risk for higher levels of social isolation, a well-known risk factor for depression and other negative health outcomes. We qualitatively examined how rural SGM youth seek emotional and informational support, which are protective factors for social isolation on social media (SM) regarding their SGM identity, and determined which SM platforms and tools are most effective in providing support. We conducted semistructured online interviews with rural SGM teens who screened positive for social isolation in spring 2020 and used a thematic analysis approach to analyze the data. Sixteen youths participated in interviews. Themes included seeking emotional support through SM groups and communities, seeking emotional support in designated online SGM spaces, using SM feeds for informational support, and disclosing SGM identity differentially across platforms. SM-based interventions could be leveraged to provide emotional and informational support for rural SGM youth across specific SM platforms and consider whether they are providing emotional or information support. Interventions focused on informational support may best be used on content-based platforms. Those designed to combat social isolation and connect marginalized SGM youths to similar others might benefit from community and forum-based platforms.
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spelling pubmed-97385102022-12-11 Support over Social Media among Socially Isolated Sexual and Gender Minority Youth in Rural U.S. during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Opportunities for Intervention Research Karim, Sana Choukas-Bradley, Sophia Radovic, Ana Roberts, Savannah R. Maheux, Anne J. Escobar-Viera, César G. Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Sexual and gender minority (SGM) rural adolescents are at risk for higher levels of social isolation, a well-known risk factor for depression and other negative health outcomes. We qualitatively examined how rural SGM youth seek emotional and informational support, which are protective factors for social isolation on social media (SM) regarding their SGM identity, and determined which SM platforms and tools are most effective in providing support. We conducted semistructured online interviews with rural SGM teens who screened positive for social isolation in spring 2020 and used a thematic analysis approach to analyze the data. Sixteen youths participated in interviews. Themes included seeking emotional support through SM groups and communities, seeking emotional support in designated online SGM spaces, using SM feeds for informational support, and disclosing SGM identity differentially across platforms. SM-based interventions could be leveraged to provide emotional and informational support for rural SGM youth across specific SM platforms and consider whether they are providing emotional or information support. Interventions focused on informational support may best be used on content-based platforms. Those designed to combat social isolation and connect marginalized SGM youths to similar others might benefit from community and forum-based platforms. MDPI 2022-11-24 /pmc/articles/PMC9738510/ /pubmed/36497684 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph192315611 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Karim, Sana
Choukas-Bradley, Sophia
Radovic, Ana
Roberts, Savannah R.
Maheux, Anne J.
Escobar-Viera, César G.
Support over Social Media among Socially Isolated Sexual and Gender Minority Youth in Rural U.S. during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Opportunities for Intervention Research
title Support over Social Media among Socially Isolated Sexual and Gender Minority Youth in Rural U.S. during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Opportunities for Intervention Research
title_full Support over Social Media among Socially Isolated Sexual and Gender Minority Youth in Rural U.S. during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Opportunities for Intervention Research
title_fullStr Support over Social Media among Socially Isolated Sexual and Gender Minority Youth in Rural U.S. during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Opportunities for Intervention Research
title_full_unstemmed Support over Social Media among Socially Isolated Sexual and Gender Minority Youth in Rural U.S. during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Opportunities for Intervention Research
title_short Support over Social Media among Socially Isolated Sexual and Gender Minority Youth in Rural U.S. during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Opportunities for Intervention Research
title_sort support over social media among socially isolated sexual and gender minority youth in rural u.s. during the covid-19 pandemic: opportunities for intervention research
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9738510/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36497684
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph192315611
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