Exploring the Therapeutic and Nontherapeutic Affordances of Social Media Use by Young Adults with Lived Experience of Self-Harm or Suicidal Ideation: A Scoping Review

Help-seeking use of social media continues to demonstrate a therapeutic potential for improving health outcomes. This scoping review explores the outcomes associated with the use of social media by young adults experiencing suicidal ideation. It incorporates a therapeutic affordance framework. A meta-synthesis method was applied to elicit themes related to therapeutic affordances from each of the included articles. The five therapeutic affordances that emerge from the thematic analysis are as follows: (a) connection, the practicality of being able to connect with peers or professionals, (b) exploration, the ability to explore and gather information for oneself or others, (c) narration, the ability to tell one's story, (d) collaboration, the ability to interact and collaborate with others, and (e) introspection, a personal and internally reflective process, and perspective. A reduction in suicidal ideation for users was found across the majority of studies (n = 9). Few studies reported negative outcomes (n = 3), while others were exploratory and considered the experiences of suicide-related social media users (n = 3). Existing literature supports the first four therapeutic affordances, while introspection is potentially unique to the young adults experiencing suicidal ideation group. The included studies present considerable heterogeneity in participant ages, making it difficult to draw unique and significant conclusions about young adults experiencing suicidal ideation.