Social media can perform an instrumental role in managing digital health initiatives. Social networking platforms are playing an important role in everyone’s lives. Social media is basically a collection of various social networking platforms that help users communicate through messages or posts. They can also form various virtual communities among themselves. Popular social networking platforms being used nowadays are LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook (Meta), X (Twitter), ResearchGate, Instagram, Reddit, Doximity, Mastodon, etc. The sudden rise in the need for social media usage was witnessed during the Coronavirus crisis due to the maintenance of social distancing norms (Sengupta and Vaish, 2024). Social networking platforms played an instrumental role during the COVID-19 pandemic (Singh et al., 2024).

Digital health can play an essential role in the well-being of people across the world and the overall enhancement of the healthcare sector. Digital health mainly talks about leveraging digital technologies for healthcare improvement. It also helps in the enhancement of medicines and drug delivery. So social media and digital health can create wonders together. Digital health literacy is an important parameter to focus on because it can have a notable impact on people (Taba et al., 2022). Therefore, further studies need to explore the possibility of formulating efficient ways to implement social media usage for better management of digital health facilities.

The rigorous exploration of relevant research studies has found that plenty of work has been pursued on digital health or social media but there is room for pursuing notable exploration in effective implementation of social networking platforms for digital health purposes. Social media can be a rich source of health-related datasets (Golder et al., 2024). A relevant study reflected the need to attempt a systematic review of leveraging social media to improve the quality of digital health services (Liu et al., 2024).

Future research directions should explore and formulate effective strategies for leveraging social networking platforms to disseminate impactful messages regarding digital health. Nowadays most people are engaged in social media activity. So, e-awareness through social networking platforms can help in understanding well-being and healthcare in a better way. Therefore, the time spent by the social media users can become impactful for them.

It can be observed that social media communication can be an effective tool for delivering digital health literacy to people to enhance their overall well-being and healthcare. The contents can be tailored according to the individual for a better user experience because such initiatives can create a lasting impact. Social media platforms are preferable mediums because most of them are easily accessible and ensure on-the-go learning. The key needs for digital health purposes are health management, healthcare enhancement, mental health support, telemedicine, and well-being. The impact of social media communication can be made more impactful for digital health purposes by blended approaches combining video tutorials, infographics, and interactive sessions to enhance engagement and knowledge retention significantly. The encouragement of partnerships between governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and private sectors to scale initiatives should be initiated for deploying social media communication for the dissemination of digital health literacy across the world. Social media communication enables inclusive, scalable, and impactful digital health literacy for effective implementation of the knowledge to resolve issues related to healthcare. By leveraging diverse social networking platforms for dissemination, equitable learning opportunities for empowering individuals and communities can be ensured for sustainable healthcare development worldwide. Social media can be leveraged to maximize reach and engagement around the globe. Social media content related to digital health can be designed on the basis of demography, literacy levels, and cultural contexts for engaging all sections of society. Therefore, this editorial can pave the foundation for developing novel approaches for leveraging social networking platforms for effective management of digital health initiatives.

References

1. Golder, S., Klein, A., O'Connor, K., Wang, Y., & Gonzalez?Hernandez, G. (2024). Social Media Posts on Statins: What Can We Learn About Patient Experiences and Perspectives?. Journal of the American Heart Association. Volume 13, Issue 7.
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2. Liu, Y., Wang, X.J., Chen, Z.S., Zhang, Y., Zhao, S. & Devici, M. (2024). Evaluating Digital Health Services Quality via Social Media. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, vol. 71, pp. 9981-9993
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3. Sengupta, S. & Vaish, A. (2024). A study on social media and higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Univ Access Inf Soc 23, 1249–1271.
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4. Singh, N., Sengupta, S., & Vaish, A. (2024). A study on social media and gig economy in higher education institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Academy of Marketing Studies Journal, 28(6), 1-15.
5. Taba, M., Allen, T.B., Caldwell, P.H. et al. (2022). Adolescents’ self-efficacy and digital health literacy: a cross-sectional mixed methods study. BMC Public Health 22, 1223.
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