COMPUTER-MEDIATED SOCIAL SUPPORT - SINGLE YOUNG MOTHERS AS A MODEL SYSTEM

Forty-two single mothers with young infants were given access;to a com puter-mediated social support (CMSS) network concerned with parenting issues. The network operated 24 hours per day over a period of 6 month s. It permitted public message exchanges, private e-mail, rind text-ba sed teleconferencing for as many as 8 participants at any one time. Du ring the 6 month intervention, the 42 women accessed the network over 16,670 times. Individual differences in participation were significant ly associated with indices of social isolation from peers. A descripti ve analyses of the messages exchanged on the network disclosed that 98 % of the replies to concerns posted in the public forum provided posit ive social support. The majority of the supportive replies fell into t he category of emotional support, followed in order by informational a nd tangible support, Both the self-report? data following the interven tion, and qualitative data extracted from online discussions indicated that close personal relationships and a sense of community developed in this novel social environment. Finally, an analysis of pretest-post test changes in the level of parenting stress revealed that mothers wh o participated regularly in this CMSS community were more likely to re port a decrease in parenting str ess following the intervention.