Communicating Health to Young Adults Using Social Media: How, Where, and When?

Abstract

Communication with young adults about healthy lifestyle behaviours needs to result in improvements in dietary choices to impact the prevalence of diet-related diseases. This paper presents the health beliefs, behaviours, and communication practices in young Australian adults (n = 2019) by their pre-defined psycho-behavioural characteristics: Lifestyle Mavens, Health-Conscious, Aspirational Healthy Eaters, Balanced-All Rounders, Contemplating Another Day, or Blissfully Unconcerned. The Lifestyle Mavens and Health-Conscious groups were more likely to actively seek out health information on social media (p < 0.05). Lifestyle Mavens were the most likely to engage with health and food content on social media, whereas the Blissfully Unconcerned were the least likely to engage (p < 0.05). Lifestyle Mavens are more likely to report creating food and health-related content for social media, whereas Aspirational Healthy Eaters are more likely to report searching for food and health-related content online, but are less likely to share or create content. Contemplating Another Day are more likely to report interactions with commercial content. This paper defines how psycho-behavioural segments communicate about health, where they look for information, how they may prefer to receive health messages, and when they are most receptive to messages. By applying existing robust market segmentation techniques, this paper provides nuanced information that challenges the assumption that online social media health information is preferred by all young adults.

Social marketing targeting healthy eating and physical activity in young adult university students: A scoping review

“…In another study, health-related information seeking on social media was observed among individual segments with the "Lifestyle Mavens" and "Health-Conscious". The "Lifestyle Mavens" individuals were the most likely to create health content on social media, whereas the "Blissfully Unconcerned" individuals were the least likely to effectively engage with social media for health content [ 43 ].…”

“…What further prevents transferability and generalizability of findings was the lack of consensus on the use of social media, which was variably reported using data regarding the type, quality, and richness of channels investigated or the frequency of media use in Refs. [ [34] , [37] , [39] , [40] , [41] , 43 ]. The quantity of studies identified and reviewed also contribute to limited transferability and generalizability of the study findings.…”

Efficacy of technology-based personalised feedback on diet quality in young Australian adults: results for the advice, ideas and motivation for my eating (Aim4Me) randomised controlled trial

“…Future studies could also consider tailoring health promotion strategies to the differing psycho-behavioural characteristics of young adults to increase engagement and uptake. (39) Technology-based interventions have rapidly entered the health research setting but few studies report the unintended consequences on study implementation. In our study, many participants did not engage with the website, complete surveys or attend dietitian consultations.…”

“…Therefore, to successfully engage and retain young adults, the reward needs to outweigh the effort of participation. Future studies could also consider tailoring health promotion strategies to the differing psycho-behavioural characteristics of young adults to increase engagement and uptake ( 39 ) .…”