Social Networks and Atopic Dermatitis: Cross-Sectional Descriptive Study

Social networks have become key tools for finding and disseminating medical information.

To describe the characteristics of social network postings on atopic dermatitis, the content that is posted, and the number of followers of pages, groups, or accounts.

We selected pages, groups, or accounts related to atopic dermatitis on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin during January and February of 2020. For each site, group, or account we recorded country of origin, year created, purpose, presence of links, provision of a contact email, and number of followers. We also analyzed the topics treated in recent content posts on the pages with the largest numbers of followers in each network.

A total of 257 pages, groups, or accounts were included: Facebook, 171; Twitter, 59; and LinkedIn, 27. Facebook had the largest total number of pages and mean (SD) number of followers: 1416.71 (3722.63). Patient support groups accounted for most of the pages (63%), but businesses or product offers had more followers (P <.035). Of the 909 posts of informative content we analyzed, the most frequent topic was "general information about atopic dermatitis" (27.94%).

Our findings show the importance of clearly defining the roles and limitations of social media platforms for designing future information campaigns and new patient-centered approaches to reaching patients with atopic dermatitis.