JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Social media has been widely used for various health-related purposes, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. Previous reviews have summarized social media usage in health interventions, health campaigns, medical education, and disease outbreak surveillance. However, most of these reviews focused on social media usage for a specific health purpose rather than a comprehensive review of how social media for various health purposes by various types of users.

Objective:

This study aims to provide a systematic review to summarize social media usages for health purposes that have been identified in previous studies.

Methods:

The researchers searched peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2006 and 2020 in 12 databases covering medical, public health, and social science areas. After coding the articles in terms of publication years, journal area, country, method, social media platform, and social media usage for health purposes, the researchers provided a narrative review of social media usage for health purposes identified in these articles.

Results:

This study summarized 10 social media usages for various health purposes by health institutes, health researchers and practitioners, and publics.

Conclusions:

Social media can be used for various health purposes. There are several new usages emerged since 2013. Research gaps also exist regarding advancing strategic use of social media based on audience segmentation, evaluating the impact of social media in health interventions, understanding the impact of health identity development, and addressing privacy concerns.