The Impact of Social Media on Modern Public Health Practices

This report examines the significant role of social media in contemporary public health practices. It highlights how the healthcare industry utilizes platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to disseminate vital health information, promote campaigns, and establish support networks. The report emphasizes the importance of reaching a wide audience, considering the global prevalence of smartphone users and internet access. It also addresses the ethical considerations of data confidentiality and user protection. The author proposes strategies for using social media to promote health practices, such as physical activity, and references relevant studies that support the use of social media in public health interventions. The report concludes with a call to action to leverage social media's potential in enhancing community and individual health practices.

Running Head: SOCIAL MEDIA AND PUBLIC HEALTH
Social Media and Public Health
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SOCIAL MEDIA AND PUBLIC HEALTH 2
Social Media and Public Health
From the public health to clinical healthcare campaign, the health industry in various
countries is increasingly turning to social media to increase, promote as well as support the
spread of data and information to enhance both community and personal health practices
(Abroms, 2019). Social media is a tool that has offered space to share vital information as well as
allowed the establishment of support structures to tract individual health and create support
networks between patients post diagnosis. Twitter, Buzz, Bing, Google, and Facebook are the
new words yet they are used daily by millions of people worldwide. It should be noted that social
media has become a powerful global tool of communication for health interventions, offering
public access to various health programs, as well as opportunities for individuals to communicate
with healthcare professionals and among themselves.
Unlike conventional media sources, social medial has the potential to reach many people
especially with the development and advancement in information technology. According to
world statistics, there are about 2.72 billion smartphones users in the entire globe translating to
about 35.14% of the global population (Sidana et al., 2018). This data shows that a good
proportion of the world can be connected to the internet. A public health information can reach
this significant number of people in the remote and dangerous areas in which convention media
cannot access.
The most commonly used social platform globally is Facebook (Kite, Foley, Grunseit &
Freeman, 2016), therefore, it remains the best platform for sharing public health information
especially public health promotion. However, I would propose that other social media platforms
like Twitter, YouTube, Instagram should be used to reach a wider population.

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The ethical consideration that should be observed while using social media is the
confidentiality of data as well as protecting social media users. social media users should ensure
that non-disclosure agreements are put in place before sharing any information in their platforms
(Hunter et al., 2018).
As a healthcare provider, I can use social media in promoting public health practices like
physical activity which has been known to reduce non-communicable diseases like cancer,
cardiovascular diseases, obesity, etc.

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References
Abroms, L. C. (2019). Public Health in the Era of Social Media. American Journal of Public
Health, 109, S130–S131. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304947
Hunter, R. F., Gough, A., O’Kane, N., McKeown, G., Fitzpatrick, A., Walker, T., … Kee, F.
(2018). Ethical Issues in Social Media Research For Public Health. American Journal of
Public Health, 108(3), 343–348. Retrieved from
https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2017.304249
Kite, J., Foley, B. C., Grunseit, A. C., & Freeman, B. (2016). Please Like Me: Facebook and
Public Health Communication. PLoS ONE, 11(9), 1–16. Retrieved from
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0162765
Sidana, S., Amer-Yahia, S., Clausel, M., Rebai, M., Mai, S. T., & Amini, M.-R. (2018). Health
Monitoring on Social Media over Time. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge & Data
Engineering, 30(8), 1467–1480. Retrieved from
https://doi.org/10.1109/TKDE.2018.2795606