The Role of Technology in Human Quality: Evidence of Maternal Social Media Usage and Its Effect on Child Health in Indonesia

Abstraksi

We examine the effect of mother's social media usage on child health in Indonesia, where there is still disparity. Based on the results of health surveys, clearly state that socio-economic differences are a major factor in the low health status of children in Indonesia. The latest phenomenon since the last decade is that the number of female Internet users has increased. Technological advances marked by the widespread use of Internet users have made health organizations and activists leveraging social media in their campaigns. In response to these challenges we use an individual level approach with the socioeconomic characteristics of the mother, child, and household as the main control. Taking advantage of the rich national socioeconomic data and utilizing the completeness of the village potential census data, we used base transceiver station (BTS) and signal strength as instruments to capture the social effects of endogenous media on health. A strong assumption is that the use of internet and social media networks requires internet signals as access to connectors. Using instrumental variables with bivariate probit methods, we can conclude that mothers using social media are better able to improve their child's health status including perfection in breastfeeding and immunization. This contribution is expected to be an input in regional planning as this health education program will have a greater impact if access to technology utilization can be felt by all mothers by ensuring equality of infrastructure in every region in Indonesia.