Social media interventions for precision public health: promises and risks.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 30854472.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41746-018-0054-0 and PMC identifier 6402501.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Social media data can be used with digital phenotyping tools to profile the attitudes, behaviours, and health outcomes of people. While there are a growing number of examples demonstrating the performance of digital phenotyping tools using social media data, little is known about their capacity to support the delivery of targeted and personalised behaviour change interventions to improve health. Similar tools are already used in marketing and politics, using individual profiling to manipulate purchasing and voting behaviours. The coupling of digital phenotyping tools and behaviour change interventions may play a more positive role in preventive medicine to improve health behaviours, but potential risks and unintended consequences may come from embedding behavioural interventions in social spaces.