The health related uses of social media among users in Saudi Arabia
Journal Title: International Journal of Medical Science and Public Health - Year 2014, Vol 3, Issue 12
Abstract
Background: Social media refer to groups of social networking sites (SNS) that are used by many people to communicate and to share different information. Health - related issues became very popular subjects of discussion on these networks. Aims & Objective s : To describe the health - related uses of SNS among users in Saudi Arabia and to identify the most trusted sources of health information for them. Materials and Methods: A cross - sectional survey was conducted on the SNS, Twitter, among users in Saudi Arabia. Results: The study included 816 users, almost two - third of them were women. The majority of users (83.1%) were ≤ 34 y ea rs of age. More than 60% of users reported following health - related accounts and 81.4% of them benefited from health information seen on SNS. Almost one - third of users discovered wrong h ealth information. The majority of users (86.4%) trust health information only if from trusted sources and 72.1% of them check the information from other sources. Health - care providers were the most trusted sources of health information. Female gender and those with higher level of education were associated with the health - related use of SNS. Conclusion: The users of SNS in Saudi Arabia are using it for health, and the majority of them supported the use of SNS for health - related activities. Any health inter vention should consider the age of users as the majority of them are young.
Authors and Affiliations
Abdulaziz ALrukban
Keywords
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- EP ID EP163874
- DOI 10.5455/ijm sph. 2014. 1 7 0 9 2014 1
- Views 118
- Downloads 0
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