Previously submitted to: Journal of Medical Internet Research (no longer under consideration since Jul 27, 2020)
Date Submitted: May 21, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Internet and social media usage for health related information among diabetes patients in Saudi Arabia
ABSTRACT
Background:
Health-related information (H.I.) can now be accessed more easily than ever using the web and social media.
Objective:
Identify H.I. seeking behavior on the internet and social media among DM patient in Kingdom Saudi Arabia (KSA).
Methods:
This is a descriptive cross-sectional study. A convenience sampling method was used to recruit 406 patients with DM. A structured Arabic questionnaire was used to collect the data.
Results:
A total of 211 of the participants used the internet and/or social media to seek H.I. Most of the participants (44.4%) were using internet for the last 6 to 10 years. The majority of the participants (60%) rated their skills as a “very good”, used YouTube (72.7%) and Twitter (55.2%) when seeking H.I., and considered YouTube (76.4%) and Twitter (64.8%) as “excellent” or “very good” resources to seek online H.I.
Conclusions:
Older age and low educated people are less likely to seek online H.I. about DM management. The majority of the participants believed that their health behaviors are positively influenced after online seeking for H.I.
Citation
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