JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Recently, social media platforms have become popular for spreading knowledge on dermatological diseases. Monkeypox has been no exception, a #monkeypox search on TikTok turns up over 1.6 billion views. We sought to determine how the recent outbreak has affected internet search trends and the quality of posts on TikTok and YouTube. Google trends data on the search term ""monkeypox" was compared to disease cases by state. Youtube and TikTok were then searched for “monkeypox” and the top 50 videos were analyzed using DISCERN criteria. Mean DISCERN scores were compared among three groups of creators; dermatologists, non-dermatologist physicians, and non-physicians. Analysis of Google Trends data showed a Pearson coefficient of 0.74 (p<.01), indicating a strong correlation between “monkeypox” searches and state outbreaks. Of the 50 TikTok videos analyzed, 32 videos featured non-physicians and 18 featured physicians. Videos featuring non-physicians had an average DISCERN score of 1.18, while physician created videos had an average score of 2.56 (p <0.01). Of the 50 YouTube videos analyzed, 37 were created by non-physicians, and 2 were created by physicians, 11 videos did not meet inclusion criteria. There was not a significant difference between mean DISCERN scores for non-physician (1.99) and physician (3.31) YouTube videos, likely due to only having 2 physician created videos in the top 50. With increased usage by physicians, social media can be used as an educational tool and ultimately contribute to decreasing the spread of both disease and misinformation. Dermatologists are particularly situated to use social media as an effective educational tool due to the visual nature of the field.