Jonathan Kovbasyuk
Assignment 2
Social networking effects on physical health
Social networks are undoubtedly a revolutionary aspect in our generation. Whether it is used to connect with friends, or gain some knowledge, social media is here to stay. Since it has become so popular, many people have taken the time to analyze its effects. With about 1 in 7 people on this planet using networking platforms, it is slowly becoming the number 1 media outlet. Its newly accustomed introduction to our lives is nothing to look past as it has some extensive affects to our health. More particularly our physical health. Social networking platforms have the ability to improve our physical health conditions by influencing us to remain active, deliver health information to us and make a more efficient healthcare system.
There are many positive ways in which social media has an effect on people. Social media has the power to influence people. We see things that we like and we are often persuaded to try it right away. Social platforms connect us to millions of people everyday and we can learn different things from everyone. Every individual has their own stories to tell, remedies to teach and culture to share. One of the fascinating topics to learn using social media platforms is health and wellness. Physical and health education must be nurturing, empowering, motivating and engaging for all people as in all other content areas. In an article written by Matt J.Vollum, “Frimming et al. (2011) found that 56.5% of learners who were in a fitness course received helpful information from the use of social media and 51.1% believed that the long-term use of social media benefited their fitness and ultimately they felt more educated about fitness. 45.6% felt more comfortable in asking questions and gaining more knowledge from professionals(Vollum).” It is more convenient to ask embarrassing questions on a social media platform where your identity is somewhat hidden rather than in person where your emotions are more involved. Therefore, people feel more comfortable asking questions online which increases their knowledge. “63–74% have learned health and exercise information from the internet (Frimming et al., 2011). For the adults who utilize the internet for health and wellness information, most said that they preferred non-professionals through social media when dealing with a personal or coping issue (Yarrow, 2012). When dealing with a specific health issue, 40% specifically used Facebook for support and confidence in educating and dealing with the issue (Oh, Lauckner, Boehmer, Fewins-Bliss, & Li, 2013).” Proper education and guidance is the key to becoming successful and makes for efficiency. A task that is being fulfilled with guidance will most likely be completed in a shorter duration than a task being done with no outside experience.
A group at the Shandong Normal University utilized and measured social media to help the physical health of their patients. Their goal was to prove that proper education can be utilized to create efficiency. To them, current exercise rehabilitation done with one group of breast cancer patients was dull. They decided to run an experiment where they incorporate social media into the fitness routines and measure the results of the outcome. The group claimed that, “With the universalization and extensive applications of the Internet, exercise intervention and guidance via phone social media apps and remote video to BC [breast cancer] patients becomes possible.” There was a control group and variable group in this experiment where one was given exercise with social media intervention and one was given rehabilitation according to the specifications of the hospital. The results showed that the group that received instruction from social media apps had much quicker recovery times.
You are also more likely to engage in more physical activities due to social platforming. By understanding how social networks can be used to improve learning, performance, and organisational outcomes, we can use the power of human interaction to improve the human condition. Not only has the internet been a source of knowledge for people, it also acts as a source of motivation. Weather it be celebrities or friends, every person has a role model that they follow on a social platform. Many of these people might be better than us in terms of physical appearance so we aspire to be like them. A regressional analysis done at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers that measured the influence that celebrities have using social media found that, “a) For both influence measures, expertise ranking is positively correlated with influence ranking. Nearly all the entries of expertise categories have a value larger than 0.5. Note that our correlation analysis is based on large samples, i.e. n≥1000, hence a value larger than 0.5 indicates very strong correlation between expertise and social media influence. b) The correlation value of expertise influence ranking is significantly and consistently larger than that in non-expertise influence ranking for four domains. c) For total influence, the correlation values of expertise entries become more significant but the values of non-expertise entries become less significant (Zhao).” We can use this as motivation to get more physically fit. There are tons of sources on facebook and instagram dedicated to the enhancement of our physical health. Those include workout pages, dietary pages and motivation pages. You are more likely to be in shape if you follow all of these. Motivation is a big factor when it comes to staying active and social media can help do that. A 2015 study “conducted by the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School for Communication reports that social networks can be used to motivate people to exercise more (Zhao).” There were 3 groups that were split up. The control group received absolutely no form of motivational help to stay physically fit. The 2 variable groups were split up. One group received motivational infographics and ads and another was invited to a social networking website where they can chat and interact with one another. Both variable groups had a rapid jump in physical exercise in the early weeks of the experiment but only one group prevailed. As it shows, the group that only received motivational online messages did not exercise for the same duration as the group that was put into a social media center. The group that had social interaction with health specialists saw a larger spike in consistency. Implementing something as simple as an anonymous social platform had GREATER effects on participants. The human brain was built to need social interaction to survive so catering to those needs is much more effective.
The use of social media to alert people of health risks benefits the overall health of society. There has been a recent rise in media posts about the effects of smoking cigarettes. Posts like these and others such as preventing bullying, the famous “if you see something say something” and anti drug advertisements are used by media sources to spread positive messages to people. A group of college students in China wanted to observe how social media reactions can be used to predict smog forecasts in the future. “Social media as a real-time urban data source has become an increasingly effective channel to observe people’s reactions on smog-related health hazard. It can be used to capture possible smog related public health disasters in its early stage. We then propose a predictive analytic approach that utilizes both social media and physical sensor data to forecast the next day smog-related health hazard (Chen).” Advertisements that encourage you to partake in healthier behavior have positive impacts on our society’s health as a whole. If we see an ad about the consequences of drunk driving by Att, we will be less likely to endanger in an activity like that therefore saving lives.
Social media can also better the health of our society as a whole. Communication is a lot more efficient with the help of social media. Ideas spread faster which leads to less secrecy and more cures. Social media has markedly changed the way people interact with their healthcare providers, changing the status quo when it comes to accountability and taking control of decisions. The factors that set social media apart from other forms of communication include its immediacy, interactivity, and that the fact that a significant amount of the content is developed by the user, rather than the provider. The Women’s Health Physiotherapy Facebook group was set up in 2013 to support 20 physiotherapists who had attended a UK based Pelvic Floor course. It has since grown to become a leading International women’s Health group with approximately 1500 members from all the WCPT regions. The members comprised women’s health clinicians, tutors, researchers, academics, post graduate and undergraduate students but also representing midwifery, oncology, urogynaecological and the obstetric medical community.
The aim of this presentation was to demonstrate the potential offered by social media to establish an international clinical interest group within physiotherapy. The group is now well established with members from the CSP, APTA, APA, CPA and other WCPT member organisations. There are daily postings of discussions relating to clinical practice, research and education. It facilitates sharing of resources such as clinical guidelines, patient resources, podcasts, blogs, research papers and webinars. The Facebook group supported the first International women’s Health Tweetchat with the UK based PhysioTalk group. Research projects in the USA, Australia and UK have been supported by the group’s members and it has also generated research projects. It has also been instrumental in increasing media exposure for the role of Women’s Health Physiotherapy [CC1] in the UK through TV, Radio, Online forums and printed media. The group has played a role in connecting MSc and PhD students with international mentors and forging links with the midwifery community which enhances collaborative working and optimal patient management. Women’s Health Facebook group now serves as an educational platform for the experienced and inexperienced therapist to share information on women’s health. The success of the group demonstrates the potential social media and, in particular, Facebook has for the physiotherapy profession. It is an example of international collaboration among clinicians with the aim of optimising patient care (Greene). Social media is transforming medicine and healthcare by using medical search engines with a special focus on Google, Being up-to-date in medicine and establishing medical blogs.Medical smartphone and tablet applications. The use of social media by hospitals and medical practices that use medical smartphone and tablet applications adds to the benefit of societal health. The role of the Internet in communication and information management has been becoming increasingly important for the last few years not only in medicine and healthcare, but it has been changing how we do shopping, interact with friends or organize events. The use of the Internet to search for health-related information has even become a common practice worldwide. Almost everyone online is doing search queries, but actually 80 % of Internet users have looked specifically for information about health topics such as diagnosis or treatment (Mesko). The use of social media in the health sector creates for much better efficiency. From a service provider point of view, providing information over a social media platform can help to free up a doctor’s time; there are many cases in which patients do not need to physically see a doctor, but rather require certain information. This in turn leads to more lives being saved. A constructive by-product of the circulation of all this information has been the rise in the amount of health-related data available to researchers as patient experiences, responses to medication, as well as more qualitative information regarding their lifestyles than is often available through traditional medical consultations.
While social media influence can benefit a person, it can just as easily impair the individual. Each person is different and every person gets influenced by their own desires. One person can look at a music video of a rapper and be inspired to be rich like them and start pursuing his career to become successful while another person can watch that same video and be influenced to take the illegal drugs that the rapper takes. Social Media influence depends on the individual and is hard to categorize. We might be influenced to do good things or we might be influenced to do bad things. Obviously, picking up a drug addiction or engaging in risky behavior is a threat to one’s physical health. Social media can also be addictive and make people lazier. Too much screen time can also result in poor vision and text neck. Overall, there are many ways that social media can hinder ones health and to argue against that would be foolish however, if used correctly, social media has the power to make us healthier. Whether or not the effects are beneficial depends on the individual. Social media is the future of our generation whether we are accustomed to it or not. We must learn to use it in moderation while also maximizing its potential to create the greatest overall outcome to our physical health.
Communication, The Annenberg School For. “Penn Researchers Use Online Peer Networks to Increase Physical Activity.” YouTube, YouTube, 7 Oct. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=117&v=wgo_3vi9dqM.
Motamed-Gorji, Nazgol, et al. “Association of Screen Time and Physical Activity with Health-Related Quality of Life in Iranian Children and Adolescents.” Health And Quality Of Life Outcomes, vol. 17, no. 1, Jan. 2019, p. 2. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1186/s12955-018-1071-z.
H.J. Oh, C. Lauckner, J. Boehmer, R. Fewins-Bliss, K. Li
Facebooking for health: An examination into the solicitation and effects of health-related social support on social networking sites
Computers in Human Behavior, 29 (5) (2013), pp. 2072-2080,
R.E. Frimming, M.J. Polsgrove, G.G. Bower
Evaluation of a health and fitness social media experience
American Journal of Health Education, 42 (4) (2011), pp. 222-227,
- Yarrow
Becoming social media savvy
Topics in Clinical Nutrition, 27 (1) (2012), pp. 34-40,
Zhao, W., Jing Liu, Yulan He, Chin-Yew Lin, and Ji-Rong Wen. “A Computational Approach to Measuring the Correlation between Expertise and Social Media Influence for Celebrities on Microblogs.” 2014 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM 2014) (2014): 460-63. Web.
Chen, Jiaoyan et al. “Forecasting smog-related health hazard based on social media and physical sensor.” Inf. Syst. 64 (2017): 281-291.
Greene, Croft, Lyons, and Ryan. “Women’s Health Physiotherapy Facebook Group: Using Social Media to Develop an International Clinical Special Interest Group.” Physiotherapy 101 (2015): E482-483. Web.
Meskó, Bertalan. Social Media in Clinical Practice. 2013. Web.
The artifact that i would like to use would involve a person using social to become healthier. It would probably be a youtube, instagram or facebook page dedicated to making people more active. It can be motivational or informative. I can also use a blog post or movie about a person’s journey to becoming fit. The options are endless.