Disclosing Health and Wellbeing

Abstract

In this chapter, I consider how disconnective practice might figure in people’s engagements with SNSs as related to health and wellbeing. However to contextualise this, it is important to note that both so called “traditional” and digital media have been enrolled in multiple arguments regarding the potentials for positive and negative affects in this respect. Such arguments relate to both our physical and mental health. In terms of our physical health, we will be aware of screen media in particular as being positioned as turning us into “couch potatoes” for instance. In terms of our mental health, discourses regarding cyber bullying, antisociality and addiction are rife. I am not saying that SNSs cannot have problematic health affects, they can. As I discussed in Chapter 6, nuanced studies of young people’s participation with alcohol, binge drinking, commercial branding and identity work demonstrate this is possible (Griffiths and Casswell 2010). However, we now have a wealth of research that demonstrates that social networks are a setting where social support can be experienced and exchanged (Cant 2004) and that even work prior to the development of SNSs suggested that the Internet may help strengthen social networks (Katz and Aspden 1997, Wellman et al. 2001, Kraut et al. 2002). There is also research which suggests that strong social networks can improve health outcomes (Crawford 1987, Lubben and Gironda 1996, Seeman 1996).