The Impact of Health Information on Chinese Social Media on Chinese University Students

Abstract

In the digital age, the development of social media has provided a plethora of opportunities for the publication and dissemination of various health information. Chinese college students, as the major users of social media platforms, receive a great deal of health information, intentionally or unintentionally. This health information, whether authoritative and professional or false and inaccurate, can have a certain impact on the mental health and life safety of college students. Since there are few studies on this topic in China, and some of them only concentrate on the influencing factors but lack research on the behaviour of college students after adopting health information, the subject of this paper is the impact of health information on social media platforms on Chinese college students. This paper distributed a questionnaire for data collection and conducted a descriptive analysis to form results. The study found that college students were wary of health messages on social media, and that endorsing health messages could lead to anxiety and cause them to adjust and change their existing health behaviours.