Modeling Health Video Consumption Behaviors on Social Media: Activities, Challenges, and Characteristics

Many people now watch health videos, such as diet, exercise, mental health, COVID-19, and chronic disease videos, on social media. Most existing studies focused on video creators, leaving the motivations and practices of viewers underexplored. We interviewed 18 participants, surveyed 121 respondents, and derived a model characterizing consumers' video consumption practices on social media. The practices include five main activities: deciding to watch videos driven by various motivations, accessing videos on social media through a socio-technical ecosystem, watching videos to meet informational, emotional, and entertainment needs, evaluating the credibility and interestingness of videos, and using videos to achieve health goals. The five activities do not necessarily proceed in a linear fashion; rather, their arrangement is situational, depending on individuals' motivations and their social and technological environments. We further identified challenges that consumers face while consuming health videos on social media and discussed design implications and directions for future research.