Social Media Use Among Adolescent Patients Visiting an Inner City Pediatric Emergency Department

Abstract

The objective of the research was to study the pattern of social media use among adolescents visiting an inner city hospital emergency department. A brief survey (English/Spanish) regarding social media use was conducted between January and March 2010. Participants were 215 teens (13–18 years), 59% of whom were Hispanic. The majority (78.6%) of participants were current users of social media. MySpace (65%) was the favored social networking web site. The study revealed that 44% of adolescents most frequently (>5 times/day) connected with their proximate peers, and 36 teens sought health information “once in a while.” We concluded that social media networking was popular among our adolescent study subjects and may have future potential as an effective health education tool.

KEYWORDS:

• adolescent
• emergency
• health information
• social media
• social networking

Notes

^!Pearson Chi-square test, *p<0.05 considered significant, ^$degree of freedom.