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Social Media and Body Image Concerns: Current Research and Future Directions

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Social media presents an unprecedented opportunity to change healththrough online influence.

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Of all the platforms available, Facebook features most commonly in health behavior change research.

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Twitter, online communities and apps are increasingly appearing in health research.

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Randomized controlled trials investigating the efficacy of social media for health are rare.

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Continued research is required to refine the application of social media for better health.

• Most AYA cancer survivors use social media, yet scholarly efforts to examine utility for supporting AYA survivors have only emerged recently.

• In addition to intervention development, research must consider prominent online communities (e.g., Facebook Groups) devoted to cancer-related needs.

• Innovative observational methods (e.g., NLP assisted data mining) complement traditional approaches to help understand actual use of social media communities for AYA survivors

• There is much potential for use of Facebook in health-related research and program delivery

• We review studies that have used Facebook to recruit diverse samples and deliver programs

• Facebook studies have generally reported success with recruitment

• Recommendations for researchers interested in using Facebook are discussed

There really isn’t an area where social media hasn’t had an impact. People use social media to share opinions, seek information, and share stories about their experiences. Healthcare hasn’t been excluded from this in any way. In fact, 60% of doctors see social media as an avenue for delivering better healthcare to patients. Of course, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t concerns. For instance, the ways that people choose to use Facebook can lead to negative outcomes.

As customers increasingly take to social media, healthcare organizations should follow their lead.  

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Social media in healthcare refers to the various tactics healthcare organizations, payers and providers leverage to connect & engage with their patients in order to improve quality of care and decrease readmission rates.

Modern lives are going digital, and healthcare is no exception. Social networks have become an important health resource, and not just for millenials. Nearly 90 percent of older adults have used social media to seek and share health information.

It can be hard to know how to navigate the healthcare social media rules. Providers, agencies, and brands need to create informative, engaging social content. At the same time, you need to follow industry rules and regulations.

In this post, we look at the many benefits of using social media in healthcare. We also provide some tips on how to keep your social channels compliant and secure.

Many social media tools are available for health care professionals (HCPs), including social networking platforms, blogs, microblogs, wikis, media-sharing sites, and virtual reality and gaming environments.1–8These tools can be used to improve or enhance professional networking and education, organizational promotion, patient care, patient education, and public health programs.3,5–10 However, they also present potential risks to patients and HCPs regarding the distribution of poor-quality information, damage to professional image, breaches of patient privacy, violation of personal–professional boundaries, and licensing or legal issues

• Social media use is consistently and positively associated with negative body image

• Longitudinal studies suggest that this association may strengthen over time

• Brief exposure to Facebook does not appear to negatively impact body image

• Appearance comparisons are important in the link between social media and body image

• Research on more diverse samples and other social media platforms is needed