Self-disclosure, social support and postpartum depressive mood in online social networks: a social penetration theory perspective

Purpose The purpose of this research is to investigate how postpartum mothers conduct self-disclosure on social media may obtain social support and therefore improve their depressive mood. Design/methodology/approach The authors extract variables of self-disclosure by manual coding postpartum mothers' 835 posts from a parenting social media in China. The ordinary least squares model and the binary logistic regression model are used to test the proposed hypotheses. Findings The study suggests that both mothers' superficial level disclosure and personal level disclosure positively affect online social support received, and the effect of personal level disclosure on social support is much greater than that of superficial level disclosure. Online social support received is related to the content of the post and reduces mothers' depressive mood. The authors further find that the association between personal level disclosure and depressive mood is fully mediated by social support. Research limitations/implications The data are collected from a parenting social network. Although it is the major parenting social media with the most users in China, the generalizability of this model and the findings to other social media need additional research. Practical implications This study offers implications for researchers and practitioners with regard to social media uses and impacts, which also has important implications for policy and interventions for the mental health of mothers. Originality/value This paper makes theoretical contributions to the literature of social penetration theory and social support by (1) dividing self-disclosure into superficial level disclosure and personal level disclosure according to the intimacy of self-disclosure; (2) empirically investigating the direct effect of online self-disclosure on social support and the mediating effect of social support between online self-disclosure and mothers' depressive mood.