The doctor will tweet you now: medicine in the social media age

The advent of Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook just over 10 years ago ushered in the second digital age, bringing with it new ways to interact – sharing status updates, writing blogs, or sharing photos or videos. Websites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, collectively termed ‘social media’, have been used for everything from organising social revolution, to tracking flu outbreaks, or predicting election outcomes. Social media have unreservedly affected all facets of daily life, extending even to healthcare, where there has been a meteoric rise in adoption. In the last year, 34% of people have used social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) to get information about a health issue. The ubiquity of social media and the endless possibilities it provides require doctors to embrace it and prepare themselves for patients who use it. Thus, physicians and physicians in training must understand their role in the online community, and how they can adopt positive social media practices. This means understanding how they can use social networks to interact with other doctors and with their patients, and the potential dangers they face in doing so.