Who (and what) influences your health?
4. Get in the social network game
Got a health question? Tweet it! Need some advice? Post it!
Recent estimates tell us that a whopping 81 percent of the U.S. population has access to social media, a 5 percent increase from 2016. One pro of social networking is that information can be spread quickly—although that can also be a con in this age of “fake news.”
Social media is a powerful health influencer for Brandi Keel. Although she’s from a small town in South Dakota, she has more than 900 Facebook friends, and she’s come to rely on their support—for example, when she posted about insomnia and received more than 50 helpful tips, from suggestions about medications and lavender to the idea of sleeping with cotton socks over her hands.
Social media platforms can harness the power of crowdsourcing to provide health information and perspectives from many people at once.
You may receive a lot of information from many people and will need to decide how reliable your sources are and if the information pertains to you; many in your newsfeed will not be trained health professionals and could give biased information.