{"id":1155,"date":"2016-04-11T17:30:36","date_gmt":"2016-04-11T22:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.longwood.edu\/ccfnn\/?p=1155"},"modified":"2016-04-11T17:30:36","modified_gmt":"2016-04-11T22:30:36","slug":"all-things-must-pass-away-online-bereavement-on-social-media-a-study-by-m-johnston-m-scoggins-c-bjornsen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.longwood.edu\/ccfnn\/2016\/04\/11\/all-things-must-pass-away-online-bereavement-on-social-media-a-study-by-m-johnston-m-scoggins-c-bjornsen\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;All Things Must Pass Away Online: Bereavement on Social Media.&#8221; A study by M. Johnston, M. Scoggins, &amp; C. Bjornsen."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><\/strong>A study conducted by\u00a0Chris Bjornsen and two Psychology students, Megan Johnston and Molly Scoggin,\u00a0entitled\u00a0&#8220;<em>All Things Must Pass Away Online: Bereavement on Social Media&#8221; <\/em>was\u00a0accepted for presentation at the\u00a0XVth Biennial Conference of the European Association for Research on Adolescence, La Barrosa, Spain, September, 2016. The following is a summary of the study:<\/p>\n<p>Adolescents and emerging adults are spending an increasing amount of time connecting, through their \u201cdigital appendages,\u201d with others on social media sites (Bjornsen, 2015; Roberts, Yaya, &amp; Manolis, 2014), including sharing the loss of a loved one. While some researchers have found that online bereavement may positively affect survivors\u2019 mental health (Bell, Bailey, &amp; Kennedy, 2015), others report that it may not affect mental health over time (van der Houwen, Stroebe, Schut, Stroebe, &amp; van den Bout, 2010). We compared the manner in which emerging adults (18-25) and older adults responded to the online bereavement posts of others, as well as the experiences of posting one\u2019s own bereavement on social media. Our sample consisted of 225 participants, recruited via Facebook, between 18 and 82 years of age (age <em>M<\/em> = 34.66, <em>SD<\/em> = 15.62; 86.7% female; 90% caucasian). Participants qualified if they had either read or responded to bereavement posts by others online, or had posted about their own loss of a loved one online. Ten items measured responses to others\u2019 online bereavement posts (e.g., \u201cI typically offer support for others\u2019 bereavement by clicking \u201clike\u201d) and 7 items measured how participants reacted to others\u2019 responses to their own bereavement posts (e.g., \u201cThe posts in reply to my bereavement posts had a positive effect on my grieving.\u201d). We found a statistically significant difference between emerging adults (ages 18-25) and older adults\u2019 responses to the bereavement posts of others (<em>F<\/em> (10, 210) = 10.93, <em>p<\/em> &lt; .0005; Wilk\u2019s \u039b = 0.658, partial \u03b7<sup>2<\/sup>\u00a0= .34). Emerging adults were more likely to offer support for others\u2019 bereavement posts by clicking \u201clike\u201d (<em>F<\/em> (1, 219) = 27.50; <em>p<\/em> &lt; .0005; partial \u03b7<sup>2<\/sup>\u00a0= .11) and to offer advice to people who were grieving (<em>F<\/em> (1, 219) = 7.01; <em>p<\/em> &lt; .01; partial \u03b7<sup>2<\/sup>\u00a0= .03). Emerging adults were less likely to post a reply to others\u2019 bereavement posts (<em>F<\/em> (1, 219) = 16.65; <em>p<\/em> &lt; .0005; partial \u03b7<sup>2<\/sup>\u00a0= .07) and to write a post to offer sympathy or condolences (<em>F<\/em> (1, 219) = 28.58; <em>p<\/em> &lt; .0005; partial \u03b7<sup>2<\/sup>\u00a0= .12). There was also a statistically significant difference between emerging adults and older participants regarding responses to their own bereavement posts (<em>F<\/em> (7, 164) = 3.48, <em>p<\/em> &lt; .005; Wilk\u2019s \u039b = 0.871, partial \u03b7<sup>2<\/sup>\u00a0= .13). Emerging adults were more likely to indicate they checked to see if others had \u201cliked\u201d their bereavement posts (<em>F<\/em> (1, 170) = 6.23; <em>p<\/em> &lt; .05; partial \u03b7<sup>2<\/sup>\u00a0= .03), and were less likely to indicate that the posts received in reply to their own bereavment posts had a positive effect on their grieving (<em>F<\/em> (1, 170) = 3.88; <em>p<\/em> &lt; .05; partial \u03b7<sup>2<\/sup>\u00a0= .02). Our results indicate that emerging adults are more likely to respond to others\u2019 bereavement more briefly and by offering advice rather than sympathy, and are affected more by having their bereavement posts noticed than by what others share in response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A study conducted by\u00a0Chris Bjornsen and two Psychology students, Megan Johnston and Molly Scoggin,\u00a0entitled\u00a0&#8220;All Things Must Pass Away Online: Bereavement on Social Media&#8221; was\u00a0accepted for presentation at the\u00a0XVth Biennial Conference of the European Association for Research on Adolescence, La Barrosa, Spain, September, 2016. The following is a summary of the study: Adolescents and emerging adults [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":836,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.longwood.edu\/ccfnn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.longwood.edu\/ccfnn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.longwood.edu\/ccfnn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.longwood.edu\/ccfnn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/836"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.longwood.edu\/ccfnn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1155"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.longwood.edu\/ccfnn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1156,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.longwood.edu\/ccfnn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155\/revisions\/1156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.longwood.edu\/ccfnn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.longwood.edu\/ccfnn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.longwood.edu\/ccfnn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}