Social media and healthcare are an odd couple, at least for Facebook.
It turns out that only about 9.5 percent of Facebook pages about chronic diseases are used for actual support, while about 32 percent of such pages are marketing ploys, according to a study in the Journal of Medicine Internet Research.
The study also found that almost 21 percent of Facebook pages dedicated to disease seek to raise awareness and another 15.5 percent offer information.
“Public health interventions using Facebook will need to be designed to ensure relevant information is easy to find and with an understanding that stigma associated with some health conditions may limit the users’ engagement with Facebook pages, the study said. “This line of research merits further investigation as Facebook and other SNS continue to evolve over the coming years.”
The study was carried out by researchers from Harvard Medical School, Stanford University School of Medicine and the Center for Connected Health, which is affiliated with Partners HealthCare.
This graphic from an iHealthBeat article about the research tells the story pretty well. The study only analyzed Facebook. Wonder how Twitter or LinkedIn or stand-alone web sites would fare?
(Graphic from the iHealthBeat article about the social media study)
