Esthetic Dentistry on Twitter: Benefits and Dangers

Abstract

Objectives. The demand for esthetic dentistry is growing, and social media constitute the main driving force behind this revolution. Twitter is a leading social media platform; however, there is a lack of research on the pattern of communications and the impact of Twitter on esthetic dentistry. The purpose of this study was to analyze the content of tweets related to esthetic dentistry and to investigate how Twitter has affected the perception of, and demand for, esthetic dentistry. Moreover, it aimed to assess the potential benefits and risks of esthetic dentistry advertising strategies on Twitter as a potential social media platform. Materials and Methods. Using a specialized web scrapping tool made available by the Python programming language, a total of 54,000 public tweets were downloaded from Twitter at real-time by matching specific keywords. The downloaded tweets were manually filtered, and 13,787 tweets were included and categorized into four tweet sets by content. Results. The main categories were tweets regarding specific cosmetic procedure, totaling 56.53% (43.2% for veneers, 13.3% for whitening), advertisements (36.72%), information (5.53%), and general cosmetic dentistry (1.22%). Negative opinions towards veneers and whitening were the most common themes (68.03% and 43.44%). For veneers, illegal use for kids was the most common negative theme (59.7%) and being destructive for whitening (86.3%). Positive opinions counted 6.26% of veneers and 4.3% of whitening tweets. Advertising for whitening products was the second most common between all tweets (16.6%), and advertising for dental practices was the third (14.7%). Presenting facilities/services was the most common marketing strategy for dental practices (49.7%). Twitter was weakly used to circulate educational content (5.5%) and to post reviews (0.75%). Conclusion. Twitter was extensively used to share experiences/opinions towards dental cosmetic interventions. Advertising is another vital use of this platform. However, circulating information was the least common use of this social media. Additionally, tweeters were rarely to post online reviews and specific advices and recommendations regarding esthetic dentistry. Moreover, females tended to participate and tweet more significantly in cosmetic-related topics than males. This platform should be tailored efficiently to target users’ priorities and to improve health literacy and self-care. Twitter was weakly used to circulate educational content according to this study and rarely used to share online reviews.

Impact of Social Media on Aesthetic Dentistry: General Practitioners’ Perspectives

“…This percentage is in accordance with the study conducted by Salim et al, where 57% of dentists reported posting affirmative content related to aesthetic dentistry. Further, 37% of dentists reported that they did not post content on social media because of the lack of time while a few said that it was due to ethical concerns, which is in accordance with the study conducted in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) where dentists stated similar reasons for not posting content related to dentistry on their social media platform [ 30 ]. In addition, the majority of dentists (90%) observed a rise in demand for aesthetic procedures in their dental practice which is in accordance with a study conducted in the Gulf region where (53%) of the patients were following a dentist or a dental clinic on social media, and they significantly agreed that dentists should communicate with people through social media rather than conventional media.…”

Use of Social Media to View and Post Dentistry-related Information in Bahrain: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…Dentists and dental hygienists comprised 55% of these hosts [3]. The use of multiple platforms by the same host has also been reported in many previous studies [3,6,7,15,20]; how- ever, the advantages and disadvantages of a single host using multiple accounts have not been previously reported. The same study [3] also stated that hosts varied in how regularly they posted.…”

“…A recent study on Twitter posts revealed that 56.53% of posts were related to esthetic dentistry, out of which only 5.5% was educational content. The majority of the posts were advertisements and personal highlights [ 6 ]. Abu-Ghazaleh et al [ 7 ] also presented similar results in a study on dental trauma in social media, finding that 56.2% of the posts on Facebook were advertisements.…”

Cross sectional study of Twitter (X) use among academic anesthesiology departments in the United States

“…Twitter also increases the number of persons that can participate in medical discourse, allowing multiple medical professionals to share their expertise on a “level playing field”, and allowing for rapid dissemination of new biomedical research findings [ 10 ]. Twitter (X) has been used in dentistry/oral surgery to promote oral health behaviors, to disseminate evidence based practices via chats and journal clubs, and to disseminate information about cosmetic dentistry [ 11 , 12 ]. Many nurses used Twitter (X) extensively during the COVID-19 pandemic to highlight their difficult working conditions, to advocate for needed resources, and to convey personal and emotional experiences from their work [ 13 ].…”