Internet + education = better health

2008.01.14 by Jan Fredrik Frantzen

People with higher education more frequently use the Internet to update their knowledge about health and to build social networks. This results in better health, a new study shows.

How much education you have - and how you use the Internet - are closely related to the state of your health. This was the finding made by Silje Camilla Wangberg at the Norwegian Centre for Telemedicine in a new study. Photo: Jan Fredrik Frantzen, NST.

Use of the Internet has expanded more than some people had predicted a few years ago. Today, about 70 % of the population uses the Internet every day, and many people also use it to find information about health questions and illnesses.

A finding that has not been made previously, however, is the clear relationship between socio-economic status such as level of income, gender and education, use of the Internet, and people's state of health.

The level of education is especially important. The more schooling you have, the more you use the Internet for health purposes and the more social support you have. And the differences are growing, say the researchers.

Internet more important than TV

Researchers at the Norwegian Centre for Telemedicine (NST) have combined the figures from two large European studies that were conducted in 2005. The study, which has just been concluded, shows that those who use the Internet to get answers to their health questions feel that they are in better health than those who rely most on other media such as TV, newspapers and radio.

And if you believe that your health is good, then it is in fact good. Previous research has shown this clearly.

"Previously, there was a fear that those who spent their time at a PC would become loners with no social network in the real world. Now, we can clearly see that they are more sociable than other people, both on the Internet and outside it," explains PhD research fellow Silje Camilla Wangberg.

She believes that some of the explanation may be that the Internet is essentially a social medium with two-way communication, in contrast to TV and newspapers.

The differences are growing

But new opportunities for some mean new challenges for others. When an ever-growing proportion of the population has higher education, the gap in health between those who have had lengthy schooling and those who have not keeps widening. More research is therefore needed to find out how we can counteract this trend.

"The question now is what can be done to reduce these differences. How can we adapt health initiatives on the Internet to include those who have lower socio-economic status and therefore need health information most because they have poorer health to start with?" asks Wangberg.

Contact person

Psychologist and PhD research fellow Silje Camilla Wangberg, mobile telephone (+47) 957 44 158 and email Silje.Camilla.Wangberg@telemed.no. You can read the whole study on this webpage: Oxford Journals, Health Promotion International.

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