Behavioural interventions delivered through interactive social media for health behaviour change, health outcomes, and health equity in the adult population

Cochrane Public Health group published a systematic review in May 2021 where the effectiveness of interactive social media interventions, in which adults are able to communicate directly with each other, on changing health behaviours, body functions, psychological health, well‐being, and adverse effects were assessed.

The evidence published up to 1 June 2020 found 88 studies involving 871,378 adults (aged 18 years and older). Most studies (49) took place in the USA; all studies took place in either high‐income countries or upper middle‐income countries. Facebook was the most commonly used social media platform; others included WeChat, Twitter, WhatsApp and Google Hangouts.

In most studies the effects of interactive social media programmes were compared against non‐interactive programmes, including paper‐based or in‐person programmes, or no programme. Ten studies compared two social media programmes against each another; for these studies we chose the more interactive of the two programmes as the 'interactive social media programme'.

The results of the review showed that compared with non‐interactive programmes, social media programmes:

‐ may improve some health behaviours, such as increasing the number of daily steps taken, or taking part in screening tests, but may show little to no effect on other health behaviours, such as better diet or reducing tobacco use (evidence from 54 studies in 20,139 people).

‐ may cause small improvements in health, such as a small increase in amount of weight lost, and a small reduction in resting heart rate (evidence from 30 studies in 4521 people).

‐ may improve people's well‐being (evidence from 16 studies in 3792 people).

‐ may have little to no effect on people's mental health, such as depression (evidence from 12 studies in 2070 people).

No studies reported any unwanted effects related to using social media.

The 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 review 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.

The systematic review can be accessed at: https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD012932.pub2/full