Fertility education: what’s trending on Instagram

Abstract

Objective To determine the prevalence, authorship, and types of fertility-related information shared on Instagram targeted toward a new patient interested in fertility options using hashtag and content analysis. Secondary outcomes included comparison of post content stratified by author type (physicians versus patients). Methods A list of ten hashtags consisting of fertility terms for the new patient was derived. Content analysis was performed in April 2019 on the top 50 and most recent 50 posts for each hashtag to determine authorship and content type. The distribution of fertility terms in posts made by physicians was compared to that of patients and differences in use of terms were analyzed. Results Our search yielded 3,393,636 posts. The two most popular hashtags were IVF (N = 912,049), and Infertility (N = 852,939). Authorship of the top posts for each hashtag (N = 1000) were as follows: patients (67 %), physicians (10 %), for-profit commercial groups (6.0 %), allied health professional (4.5 %), professional societies (1 %), and other (11 %). Of these posts, 60 % related to patient experiences, 10 % advertisements, 10 % outreach, and 8 % educational. Physicians were more likely to author posts related to oocyte cryopreservation compared to IVF, while patients were more likely to author posts about IVF (p < 0.0001). Conclusions Over 3 million posts related to fertility were authored on Instagram. A majority of fertility posts are being mobilized by patients to publicly display and share their personal experiences. Concurrent with the rising utilization of planned oocyte cryopreservation, there is a trend toward physicians educating their patients about the process using social media as a platform. Physician participation on social media may offer a low-cost platform for networking and connecting with patients. Future studies examining the educational quality of posts by author type should be explored.

Fertility education on Instagram: advertisements vs. educational content analysis for posts in Bahasa (Indonesian language)

“…Our study and previous studies have provided much information regarding fertility on Instagram, both in English and Bahasa. Surprisingly, there were more fertility-related posts in Bahasa ( N = 4 005 400; seven hashtags) than in other parts of the world using English ( N = 3 393 636; 10 hashtags) 6 .…”

“…Our result was different from that of a study by Peyser and colleagues. Researchers have found that for-profit healthcare organizations authored only 6% of infertility-related posts in English on Instagram 6 . It seems that hospital executives do not widely use social media in English-speaking countries.…”

“…This study is a cross-sectional observational study using data collected on Instagram. The data-searching method using hashtags was adopted and modified from previous studies by Peyser and colleagues, Park and colleagues, and Qin and colleagues 6 – 8 . This study is reported in line with the STROCSS criteria 9 .…”

“…While those studies dealt with information written in English, fertility information posted in non-English languages has not been explored. Therefore, this study aims to determine the prevalence, authorship, and types of fertility information in Bahasa on Instagram and to compare the content of posts authored by physicians versus non-physicians 5 , 6 .…”

Randomized control trial of a decision aid for women considering elective egg freezing: The Eggsurance study protocol

“…31,32 However, media information is often limited and information on fertility clinic websites have been rated as low quality and strongly biased towards EEF. 12,27,30,[33][34][35][36][37][38] Women who have previously frozen eggs have reported that their greatest desire was to have detailed EEF information, focusing specifically on women. 23 To address this, we developed an online Decision Aid (DA) for women considering EEF.…”