Fertility Behaviors and Social Media: Do They Cluster Together?

Jet Wildeman , Radboud University
Sandor Schrijner, Radboud University Nijmegen
Jeroen Smits , Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

This paper examines the role of social media as potential determinant of sub-Saharan Africa’s (SSA) contraceptive acceptance, usage and Crude Birth Rates (CBRs). Even though the connection between traditional information and communication technologies (ICTs) and fertility behaviors has been firmly established, the connection between social media and fertility remains understudied. This is surprising given the fact that the characteristics of social media are highly likely to influence fertility behavior; even more so than traditional ICTs. For example, social media has the potential to enlarge individual’s social networks, which could lead to encounter new role models, different fertility preferences, and access to information. This could probably result in changes in fertility attitudes and behavior. As such, understanding subnational variation in contraceptive acceptance, usage, and CBRs in combination with subnational variation in social media usage, offers new opportunities for geographical targeting and prioritizing of policy. We conducted a subnational analysis with use of nationally representative cross-sectional data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) which were collected between 2015 and 2019 for 32 countries in SSA. For measuring social media usage, we constructed a sub-national index of social media usage using digital trace data from Facebook. In this way, this paper aims to provide evidence that social media might be an effective tool to enlarge contraceptive usage and acceptance and to influence to CBRs which in turn will contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

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 Presented in Session P1. Postercafe