Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness discusses patient education in dermatology, including opportunities for strategic, widespread dissemination through social media versus the traditional website.
Sheilagh Maguiness, MD, Associate Professor of Dermatology and Pediatrics, University of Minnesota and President of the Society for Pediatric Dermatology.
“I called [my talk] an ‘unexpected journey’ because I was a slow adopter and initially a reluctant user of social media. But over the past few years I’ve changed my mind about the power of connecting with patients and the general population in an education-based mindset on social media,” said Sheilagh Maguiness, MD, who presented “Social Media in Dermatology: An Unexpected Journey” at the 75th Annual Meeting of the Pacific Dermatologic Association in San Francisco, California.
Statistics about social media’s reach, including that 60% of the world’s population uses social media for an average of 2.5 hours a day,1 might surprise many dermatologists, said Dr. Maguiness.
“It’s like, move aside Google because social media sites are positioning themselves to be the primary search engines across many domains. Instagram, TikTok, Facebook—they’re all aiming for that No. 1 market share of our time.”
Forty percent of young people, especially Gen Z, already prefer searching on TikTok or Instagram for not just consumer packaged goods but also for healthcare related information, said Dr. Maguiness.2
“That was the crux of my talk: People are using social media to seek out health-related information, and it’s not just for themselves but also parents seeking that information for their children.”
According to Dr. Maguiness, studies have shown that 90% of parents are using social media and the majority use it to look up symptoms or health-related issues for their kids. About 1 in 3 are taking health-related action based on information consumed on social media, she said.3
“What I found really interesting when digging into all of this is that a good portion of those individuals looking at that health-related information, if they were between the ages of 18 to 24, up to 20% stated that they trusted the medical information shared on their social feed more than from their doctor.”4
Parasocial Interaction Theory
Research into potential reasons for the lack of trust led Dr. Maguiness to the theory on parasocial interaction, introduced by psychologists Horton and Wohl in 1956.5,6
“[Parasocial interaction] has to do with why people or patients are more likely to trust an influencer or media or celebrity figure over others, like a doctor or healthcare professional. The reason that this is even more intensified on social media is because people are exposed to these influencers on a repeated and frequent basis. It kind of creates the illusion of friendship, intimacy, and trust.”
If it’s all about access and people getting healthcare information online, dermatology is struggling because people on social media have poor access to dermatologists—particularly pediatric dermatologists, said Dr. Maguiness.
“As of 2020, there were only about 340 pediatric dermatologists practicing in the U.S. There are very few of us that are contributing evidence-based pediatric dermatology information on things like social media where patients would be able to see and learn from it.”7
One study looking that examined who is providing dermatology-based information on social media found 40% of the information comes from a healthcare professional but only 4% was posted by a board-certified dermatologist, said Dr. Maguiness.8
Helping to Educate
Education has been a focus of her journey, according to Dr. Maguiness.
“I started really early volunteering with the Society for Pediatric Dermatology, chairing their education committee and moving up as VP of education and career development. And in those roles, we as a society created wonderful peer-reviewed resources for families, patients and even primary caregivers. If you go to pedsderm.net, you will find those under patient and family information.”
The problem was that the Society’s data revealed the evidence-based information wasn’t reaching many people, said Dr. Maguiness.
“For one of the handouts that we did on pyogenic granulomas, a very common type of blood vessel growth in children. In six months that handout was only viewed about 300 times. The same is true for some of the videos and high-quality education that we’ve put out.”
That stimulated her to think about other ways to get information into the hands of more people. The next step in her journey was to join the American Academy of Pediatrics section on dermatology, chairing the education committee and helping to put out new, high-quality, evidence-based content on Healthychildren.org, said Dr. Maguiness.
“Skinfuencers” emerged on social media during the pandemic, she said.
“… these new individuals, whether they were board-certified derms or not, were giving information online about dermatology-related topics. I watched as several dermatologists joined social media and started to really do what I thought was a great job with evidence-based information that was reaching not thousands of people but millions of people.”
Observing others helping to educate with accurate, evidence-based information prompted Dr. Maguiness to want to give social media a try, she said.
“That inspired me to create my own site. I started with TikTok and was surprised at the response. I think people are very hungry for good information, and they definitely do trust and look to healthcare professionals—board-certified dermatologists—as the experts.”
When you see a post on cradle cap get 2 million views in one weekend, that’s powerful, said Dr. Maguiness.
Social Media Pitfalls
Still, healthcare misinformation is rampant on social media, said Dr. Maguiness.
“Misinformation spreads faster, farther, and in degrees of magnitude more than truth. There was a study out of MIT in 2020 that looked at the spread of misinformation. These authors proved that fake news can travel 70% faster. It’s more likely to be retweeted than true facts by 10 to 20 times, and it takes a lot longer for true facts to reach the first 1500 viewers.”9
This is an “opportunity” for board-certified dermatologists and physicians in general to get out in front, address, and potentially combat misinformation, said Dr. Maguiness.
Dermatologists and others can learn more about social media pitfalls and specific social media guidelines on AMA.Assn.org, she said.10
“But social media is not for everyone. It’s uncomfortable to learn new skills and put yourself out there. But if we don’t engage, we know that more misinformation will spread, and nonmedical professionals will propagate incorrect information. I feel like we have this unique opportunity where doctors on social media can help to restore trust. I think that patients are trying to tell us something. They want more good information.”
References
- Kemp S. Digital 2023 April Global Snapshot Report. DataReportal. April 27, 2023. Accessed September 15, 2023.
- Delouya S. Nearly Half of Gen Z Prefers TikTok and Instagram Over Google Search. BusinessInsider.com. July 13, 2022. Accessed September 22, 2023. Nearly Half of Gen Z Prefers TikTok and Instagram Over Google Search (businessinsider.com)
- Bryan MA, Evans Y, Morishita C, et al. Parental Perceptions of the Internet and Social Media as a Source of Pediatric Health Information. Acad Pediatr. 2020 Jan-Feb;20(1):31-38.
- Gordon D. 33% Of Gen Zers Trust TikTok More Than Doctors, New Survey Shows. Forbes.com. December 20, 2022. Accessed September 22, 2023.33% Of Gen Zers Trust TikTok More Than Doctors, New Survey Shows (forbes.com)
- Horton D, Wohl, RR. Mass communication and para-social interaction; observations on intimacy at a distance. Psychiatry. 1956;19(3):215-229. doi:10.1080/00332747.1956.11023049
- Gleason TR, Theran SA, Newberg EM. Parasocial Interactions and Relationships in Early Adolescence. Front Psychol. 2017;8:255. Published 2017 Feb 23. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00255.
- Sinha S, Lin G, Zubkov M, Wu R, Feng H. Geographic distribution and characteristics of the pediatric dermatology workforce in the United States. Pediatr Dermatol. 2021;38(6):1523-1528. doi:10.1111/pde.14824
- Park JH, Christman MP, Linos E, Rieder EA. Dermatology on Instagram: An Analysis of Hashtags. J Drugs Dermatol. 2018 Apr 1;17(4):482-484. PMID: 29601627; PMCID: PMC6831082.