The Crisis of Social Identity in the Digital Era: A Sociological Analysis of Prosocial Behaviour, Altruism and Persuasion in Social Media

Few studies have assessed professional identity among medical learners and links between identity and unprofessional behaviors. This study applied identity fusion theory and professional identity formation to examine the relationship between medical students’ social media beliefs and behaviors and professional identity measured by a physician professional identity fusion pictorial item. The hypothesis was students who were more strongly fused with physicians as a group would report (a) stronger beliefs that students should be held accountable for their social media behavior and (b) more concerns about their own social networking behavior. Participants included 3473 first-, second-, third-, and fourth-year medical students at eight schools in Texas. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and regression analyses were conducted to explore if professional identity formation, measured by the physician professional identify (PPI) item, was related to social media beliefs about accountability and concerns about social media behavior. The degree of physician professional identity fusion was unrelated to concerns about social media behavior (p = 0.102). Analyses revealed students’ degree of physician professional identity fusion was positively associated with beliefs about accountability for social media behaviors (b = 0.085, p = 0.004). This suggests as students’ physician identity emerges, they are more likely to expect themselves and peers to represent the larger community of physicians professionally, at least in the realm of social media. While this study focused on beliefs and behaviors related to social media, the results are encouraging for professional identity formation in general.

Generation Z, often referred to as digital natives, has been shaped by constant exposure to technology, social media, and digital communication from an early age. In the context of nursing education, understanding how these digital habits influence learning, engagement, and professional development is critical for designing effective teaching strategies. This review aims to examine the impact of technology and social media on Generation Z nursing students, focusing on their learning styles, academic performance, professional socialization, and potential challenges. A narrative review methodology was employed, sourcing peer-reviewed articles published between 2015 and 2025 from databases including PubMed, CINAHL, Scopus, and Google Scholar. Inclusion criteria encompassed studies addressing Generation Z learners in nursing or healthcare education, with an emphasis on technology use, digital engagement, and social media behaviors. After screening 42 articles, 36 studies were selected for in-depth analysis. Findings indicate that Generation Z nursing students demonstrate high digital literacy and a preference for technology-enhanced learning, including online modules, virtual simulations, and mobile learning applications. Social media platforms facilitate peer collaboration, knowledge sharing, and professional networking but may also contribute to distractions, reduced attention span, and challenges in maintaining professional boundaries. Technology integration, when used effectively, supports interactive learning, instant feedback, and flexible study opportunities, enhancing engagement and academic outcomes. However, excessive reliance on digital tools can impede critical thinking, interpersonal communication, and real-world clinical interactions. Mental health considerations, such as anxiety linked to social media use and screen time, were also noted as important factors affecting student well-being.In conclusion, technology and social media have both positive and negative influences on Generation Z nursing students. Educators are encouraged to adopt blended and technology-enhanced teaching strategies that leverage digital skills while promoting critical thinking, professional behavior, and well-being. Structured guidance on social media use, along with faculty development in digital pedagogy, is essential to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks associated with technology in nursing education.

While the digital environment, and in particular social media, surrounds not only human’s identity and its societal functions projection, e.g., institutional and financial aspects, it also captures both individual and collective thoughts regarding former, ongoing, and future concepts, trends, and incidents placed in the physical world, in the digital environment, or in both which could impact both individual and collective consciousness, behaviour, and attitude towards different dimensions of reality. Accordingly, an initial attempt to define and model responsible digital security behaviour was made and ongoing discourses and AI-based solutions for tackling and containing social manipulation mechanisms exist in this domain. Noteworthily is that dedicated attention to understanding and modelling responsible digital security behaviour in social media for tackling and/or countering social media manipulation, e.g., disinformation and misinformation, still lacks. To this end, this research aims (i) to capture the factors influencing user behaviour towards tackling and/or countering social media manipulation, (ii) to build a Machine Learning model that assesses user’s responsibility in relation to tackling and/or countering social media manipulation mechanisms, and (iii) propose a set of socio-technical recommendations for building resilience to such mechanisms. To accomplish these research objectives, a Design Science Research methodological approach is taken by designing, developing, and evaluating the model proposed through exemplification. Finally, this research aims to enhance digital security awareness and resilience to social media manipulation of users and policy decision-makers to manage and further extend in a responsible and safe way the digital environment.

This study examined the connections between social media use and behaviors, COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy beliefs, and COVID-19 vaccine uptake in 809 emerging and middle-aged adults. Emerging adults reported more overall social media use, active and passive social media behaviors, and use of most platforms (i.e., Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter/X, Reddit, and YouTube), whereas middle-aged adults reported more Facebook use and higher vaccine uptake. COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy beliefs were linked to lower vaccine uptake, with this association unexpectedly stronger among individuals who reported less social media use and fewer active and passive social media behaviors. Active social media behaviors were associated with stronger vaccine conspiracy beliefs, whereas passive social media behaviors and overall use did not show a similar association. Exploratory analyses of platform-specific effects revealed nuanced patterns: TikTok use was associated with stronger vaccine conspiracy beliefs, Instagram use was associated with higher vaccine uptake, and Snapchat use was associated with lower vaccine uptake. Our findings highlight the complex, platform-specific influences of social media use and behaviors on COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy beliefs and vaccine uptake. Future studies are needed to investigate the role of specific social media platforms in spreading, perpetuating, or countering misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine.

As a digital environment introduced for establishing and enhancing human communication through different social networks and channels, social media continued to develop and spread at an incredible rate making it difficult to find or imagine a concept, technology, or business that does not have or plan to have its social media representation and space. Concurrently, social media became a playground and even a battlefield where different ideas carrying out diverse validity degrees are spread for reaching their target audiences generated by clear and trustable well-known, uncertain, or even evil aimed entities. In the stride carried out for preventing, containing, and limiting the effects of social manipulation of the last two types of entities, proper/effective security awareness is critical and mandatory in the first place. On this behalf, several strategies, policies, methods, and technologies were proposed by research and practitioner communities, but such initiatives take mostly a defender perspective, and this is not enough in cyberspace where the offender is in advantage in attack. Therefore, this research aims to produce social media manipulation security awareness taking the offender stance by generating and analysing disinformation tweets using deep learning. To reach this goal, a Design Science Research methodology is followed in a Data Science approach, and the results obtained are analysed and positioned in the ongoing discourses showing the effectiveness of such approach and its role in building future social media manipulation detection solutions. This research also intends to contribute to the design of further transparent and responsible modelling and gaming solutions for building/enhancing social manipulation awareness and the definition of realistic cyber/information operations scenarios dedicated/engaging large multi-domain (non)expert audiences.

Purpose – This paper aims to research as to how Twitter is influential as an electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) communication tool and thereby affecting movie market. In present days, social media is playing an important role in connecting people around the globe. The technology has provided a platform in the social media space for people to share their experiences through text, photos and videos. Twitter is one such online social networking media that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters, known as “tweets”. Twitter has nearly 200 million users and billions of such tweets are generated by users every other day. Social media micro-blogging broadcasting networks such as Twitter are transforming the way e-WOM is disseminated and consumed in the digital world. Twitter social behaviour for the Hollywood movies has been assessed across seven countries to validate the two basic blocks of the honeycomb model – sharing and conversation. Twitter behaviour was studied for 27 movies in 22 different cities of seven countries and for six genres with a total tweets of 9.28 million. The difference of Twitter social media behaviour was compared across countries, and “sharing” and “conversation” as two building blocks of the honeycomb model were studied. t-Test results revealed that the behaviour is different across countries and across genres. Design/methodology/approach – The objective of the paper is to analyse Twitter messages on an entertainment product (movies) across different regions of the world. Hollywood movies are released across different parts of the world, and Twitter users are also in different parts of the world. The objective is to hence validate “conversation” and “sharing” building blocks of the honeycomb model. The research is confined to analysing Twitter data related to a few Hollywood movies. The tweets were collected across nine different cities spanning four different countries where English language is prominent. To understand the Twitter social media behaviour, a crawler application using Python and Java was developed to collect tweets of Hollywood movies from the Twitter database. The application has incorporated Twitter application programming interfaces (APIs) to access the Twitter database to extract tweets according to movies search queries across different parts of the world. The searching, collecting and analysing of the tweets is a rather challenging task because of various reasons. The tweets are stored in a Twitter corpus and can be accessed by the public using APIs. To understand whether tweets vary from one country to another, the analysis of variance test was conducted. To assess whether Twitter behaviour is different, and to compare the behaviour across countries, t-tests were conducted taking two countries at a time. The comparisons were made across all the six genres. In this way, an attempt was made to obtain a microscopic view of the Twitter behaviour for each of the seven countries and the six genres. Findings – The findings show that the people use social media across the world. Nearly 9.28 million tweets were from seven countries, namely, USA, UK, Canada, South Africa, Australia, India and New Zealand for 27 Hollywood movies. This is indicative of the fact that today, people are exchanging information across different countries, that people are conversing about a product on social media and people are sharing information about a product on social media and, thus, proving the hypothesis. Further, the results indicate that the users in USA, Canada and UK, tweet more than the other countries, USA and UK being the highest in tweets followed by the Canada. On the other hand, the number of tweets in Australia, India and South Africa are low with New Zealand being the lowest of all the countries. This indicates that different countries’ users have different social media behaviour. Some countries use social media to communicate about their experience more than in some other country. However, consumers from all over the world are using Twitter to express their views openly and freely. Originality/value – This research is useful to scholars and enterprises to understand opinions on Twitter social media and predict their impact. The study can be extended to any products which can lead to better customer relationship management. Companies can use the Internet and social media to promote and get feedback on their products and services across different parts of the world. Governments can inform the public about their new policies, benefits of governmental programmes to people and ways to improve the Internet reach to more people and also for creating awareness about health, hygiene, natural calamities and safety.

Understanding GI Twitter and Its Major Contributors

A comparison of social media behaviors between sexual minorities and heterosexual individuals

Introduction: The use of social media has been steadily increasing among U.S. adults, and while time spent on social media has been linked to certain mental health difficulties, it remains unclear precisely which social media behaviors may be damaging to mental well-being. The current study aimed to identify specific social media behaviors related to Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). Methods: U.S adults (n = 1,314) aged 18 to 82 (M = 35.74) who actively use social media were recruited to participate in an online survey assessing specific social media behaviors. The Patient Health Questionnaire was included to assess the presence of GAD. Univariate analyses were conducted to identify specific social media behaviors associated with GAD. A stepwise binary multivariate logistic regression was developed to determine the key social media behaviors most strongly associated with GAD. Results: Analyses at the univariate level showed a trend, such that individuals with GAD endorsed behaviors associated with social media addiction and censorship. Other behaviors associated with GAD included a greater likelihood of participants comparing themselves to others who are better off than they are, being bothered if unfriended/unfollowed, and being more likely to post under the influence. The multivariate logistic regression model identified two key social media factors most strongly associated with GAD: participants comparing themselves to others better off (p < .001) and posting while drinking alcohol (p = .044).Conclusion: Upward social comparisons and alcohol use while on social media are significantly associated with GAD in an adult population. Keywords: Anxiety Disorder; Social Media; Upward Comparisons; Alcohol Use

Specific social media behaviors have been found to be differentially associated with adjustment outcomes; however, the extant research has yet to consider the motivations behind why adolescents engage in these specific behaviors. This study examined the role of two developmentally relevant motivational correlates (social goals and pubertal status) on four social media behaviors (self-disclosure, self-presentation, social monitoring, and lurking) and two time-based measures of social media use (daily number of hours on social media and frequency of social media use). Self-report data were collected from 426 middle-school students (54.2% female, 73.6% White, 11.5% Black, 4.8% Hispanic, 10.1% other ethnicity, and mean age = 12.91). Social goals and pubertal status were distinctly associated with different social media behaviors, with some relevant sex differences. Popularity goal was positively associated with all six measures of social media engagement, although the associations for self-presentation and social monitoring were stronger for girls. Sex differences in lurking followed the same pattern but did not reach significance. Acceptance goal was associated with fewer hours spent on social media for girls only. Early developers reported more self-disclosure and lurking behaviors, and marginally more social monitoring (girls only). These findings indicate the importance of identifying motivational factors, especially social goals, when considering early adolescents' social media behaviors.

The advent of social media has significantly transformed health communication and the health-related actions of older adults, offering both obstacles and prospects for this generation to embrace eHealth developments. We aimed to investigate the correlation between social media and eHealth literacy in older individuals and answer four research questions: (1) What are the specific social media behaviors (including general use behaviors and health behaviors) of older adults on social media? (2) How do these behaviors impact their eHealth literacy? (3) How does eHealth literacy influence older adults' social media behaviors? and (4) What factors influence older adults' use of social media for health-related purposes? Using predetermined keywords and inclusion criteria, we searched Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed databases for English-language journal articles published from 2000 to 2024, following the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) principles. The initial search identified 1591 publications, and after removing duplicates, 48.21% (767/1591) of publications remained. Ultimately, 1% (16/1591) of studies met the inclusion criteria. A research question-driven manual qualitative thematic analysis was conducted, guided by the categorization of social media use behaviors, the definition of eHealth literacy, and the social-ecological model to provide direction for coding and thematic analysis. In addition, attention was given to identifying unanticipated behaviors or phenomena during the coding process, and these were subsequently incorporated into the analytical framework. The results indicated that older adults' general social media use behaviors are primarily characterized by social media preferences, with 2 subthemes identified. Their social media health behaviors revealed 5 main themes and 14 subthemes. Among the primary themes, health information behavior appeared most frequently (12/16, 75%), followed by self-management (8/16, 50%). Other themes included health decision-making (4/16, 25%), telemedicine (3/16, 19%), and health interventions (2/16, 13%). Cross-thematic analysis confirmed that older adults' social media use behaviors and their eHealth literacy had a reciprocal relationship. Finally, the study revealed that the use of social media to improve eHealth literacy among older adults was influenced by individual, interpersonal, institutional or organizational, and social factors. The reciprocal relationship between older adults' social media use and eHealth literacy highlights the importance of establishing a long-term positive mechanism that mutually reinforces social media health practices and eHealth literacy. Based on the findings, this review proposes key directions for efforts to achieve this goal: (1) leveraging postpandemic momentum to enhance eHealth literacy among older adults through social media, (2) reconsidering the dimensions of eHealth literacy among older adults in the context of Web 2.0, (3) actively developing age-friendly integrated social media health service platforms, (4) optimizing social media for engaging and reliable health information for older adults, and (5) integrating social support systems to foster lifelong eHealth learning for older adults.

Nowadays, it is very evident that social media has become part of our lives. Our country shifted from analogue to digital that created a wide space and open more resources for people to receive, gather, and acquire information whether it is politically related or for entertainment purposes. The abundance of online content and the new forms of distribution have enabled the quick propagation of both verified and unverified information, especially in social media. The study on social media use, social media behavior, cognitive biases, and political awareness among the one hundred student voters of Laguna State Polytechnic University, San Pablo City campus utilized a descriptive-correlational research design. The data were gathered through a survey using researcher-made questionnaires. The results implied that the participants perceived social media use, social media behavior, and cognitive biases in different ways, such as never-rarely-often while having a positive political awareness. In conclusion, there is a significant relationship between social media use of (social media networking sites and microblogging and social networking service), social media behavior, confirmation bias, and political awareness among student voters.

Objective: The authors sought to examine the association between Fear of Missing Out (FoMO), mental health, personality traits, and social media use among Turkish and U.S. university students, belonging to Generation Z (Gen Z), born between 1997 and 2012, a cohort deeply immersed in technology and social media from an early age. Methods: The present online survey study included 637 university students aged 18-25 (20.09% male, 78.65% female, 1.26% other) from Türkiye (86.03%) and the US (14.97%). Participants completed 19 sociodemographic questions, a 17-item FoMO Scale, and a 44-item Personality Inventory. The study analyzed the relationship between FoMO, mental health, personality traits, and social media use across different platforms. Results: Findings revealed that frequent cell phone use and higher FoMO scores were significantly associated with problematic social media use. TikTok users reported higher FoMO compared to non-users. Additionally, there was a positive correlation between the number of social media platforms used and FoMO. Social media use driven by boredom and passive observation further increased FoMO. Associations between FoMO and personality traits highlighted the role of individual differences in social media behaviors. Conclusion: The study highlights the need for tailored interventions that address both social media usage patterns and personality traits to reduce the negative impact of FoMO on mental health. While Gen Z are digital natives, they need to become digital experts to navigate the mental health challenges exacerbated by curated content and the prevalence of FoMO on social media. Universities play a crucial role in raising awareness and supporting students in managing these psychological pressures by promoting balanced digital behaviors. A deeper understanding of the interplay between digital behaviors, personality traits, and cultural contexts can inform future interventions aimed at reducing FoMO and enhancing the well-being of young people in an increasingly interconnected world.

As social media has become more imperative in daily life, people pay more attention to self-presentation and impression management on social media, and some have even become psychologically dependent. There is a large group of socially addicted users who continuously strive to improve their online self-presentation. Due to stress and burnout arising from social media addiction, people change their social media behavior. The influence of mindfulness on social behavior cannot be ignored. This study aims to explore coping behaviors and the role of mindfulness for people under social media pressure and social media addiction in China’s special political environment. We found significant differences in self-presentation, social media pressure, and social media addiction among different circles in the Chinese context. Experiments have shown that people’s socially addictive behaviors and abilities to withstand social media pressure are affected by their mindfulness. In addition, the more social media pressure people perceive on social media, the more likely they are to stop using social media and shift to offline interpersonal interactions. However, when there are more offline interpersonal interactions, people’s willingness to return to social media platforms increases.

Exploring users' content creation and information dissemination behavior in social media: The moderating effect of social presence