Social media use and health information seeking and sharing among young Chinese adults

This study sets out to determine who trusts healthand fitness-related information available in traditional and social media and what influences online engagement with health and fitness in China. The focus is on differences in media use across four specific traditional media and eight social media outlets. Using the survey method, we classify the eight social media platforms into two types, on the basis of their characteristics; and the main criterion in our classification is whether these platforms are able to offer social support to users easily or not. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression is applied to predict perceived media credibility and online engagement with health and fitness. The results show that young adults who are less well educated, watch television and use the social support-oriented platforms WeChat and Qzone very frequently, and read newspapers and use Baidu Tieba sometimes are more likely to consider online information to be credible. Also, being male, being better educated, and regarding health information supplied by media as credible, as well as using certain media platforms frequently are features associated with frequent engagement with health and fitness. The media outlets in question include magazines and three social support-oriented websites: Sina Weibo, WeChat, and Qzone.