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Systematic Review
The primary aim was to assess the effectiveness of interactive social media interventions, in which adults are able to communicate directly with eachother, on changing health behaviours, body functions, psychological health, well-being, and adverse effects.
A secondary objective was to assess the effects of these interventions on the health of populations who experience health inequityas defined by PROGRESS-Plus.
88 studies (871,378 participants) were included, of which 84 were RCTs, three were CBAs and one was an ITS. The majority of the studies were conducted in the USA (54%). In total, 86% were conducted in high-income countries and the remaining 14% in upper middle-income countries. The most commonly used social media platform was Facebook (39%) with few studies utilising other platforms such as WeChat,Twitter, WhatsApp, and Google Hangouts. Many studies (48%) used web-based communities or apps that mimic functions of these well-known social media platforms.
The authors compared studies assessing interactive social media interventions with non-interactive social media interventions, which includedpaper-based or in-person interventions or no intervention. The authors found a range of effects on health behaviours, such as breastfeeding, condom use, diet quality, medication adherence, medical screening and testing, physical activity, tobacco use, and vaccination. There was little to no effect for health behaviours such as reduced tobacco use (20,139 participants in 54 RCTs).
This review combined data for a variety of outcomes and found that social media interventions that aim to increase physical activity may be effective and social media interventions may improve well-being. While the authors assessed many other outcomes, there were too few studies to compare or, where there were studies, the evidence was uncertain. None of the included studies reported adverse effects related to the social media component of the intervention. Future studies should assess adverse events related to the interactive social media component and should report on population characteristics to increase our understanding of the potential effect of these interventions on reducing health inequities.