Patterns and Motivations of Young Adults' Health Information Acquisitions on Facebook

Using in-depth interviews with 32 young adults in the winter of 2012, this study explored how and why young people seek and scan health information on Facebook. A grounded theory approach was employed to analyze the data and construct an explorative framework focusing on health information desire and Facebook use as two dimensions to explain the four patterns of health information acquisitions: high seeking/high scanning, low seeking/high scanning, low seeking/low scanning, and high seeking/low scanning. For these patterns, the major motivations were identified as knowledge fulfillment, entertainment, sociability, and instrumentality. The findings contribute a range of practical implications in terms of how public health practitioners might better use Facebook to communicate health messages.