Teething beliefs and amber necklaces: a content analysis of users perspectives from Facebook comments

This digital qualitative study conducted an inductive content analysis of 1,000 Facebook comments about the use of amber necklaces for teething symptom relief, aiming to understand users' perceptions of this practice. The comments were divided into units of analysis (n=2,166) and coded into thematic categories in QDAMiner. Using Word Stat software, category frequencies, word clouds, and cluster analysis were determined. The Chi-square test was used to compare the distribution of categories across three distinct time points. Most comments were made by users with white personas (81.8%), female gender (96.3%), and Brazilian nationality (97.8%). The most frequent categories were "the information is useful or potentially useful" (18.8%) and "acquisition or intention to acquire the necklace" (12.1%), with respective increases of 5.9% to 23.6% and 15.7% to 24.5% over time. The frequencies of "concern/anxiety about the use of the amber necklace" and "teething experience" decreased from 5.8% to 2.0% and from 12.0% to 3.1%, respectively. Despite the reduction in reports of teething symptoms, there is a growing trend among Brazilians to consider the amber necklace a valid solution for teething symptoms.