“Influencer” : Sosyal Medya Etki̇leyi̇ci̇leri̇ Sağlik Davranişini Etki̇ler Mi̇?

Abstract

Social media has completely reshaped how individuals communicate about almost every topic, including health. Image-video-sharing and platforms, micro-blogging, and social networking such as Instagram, SnapChat, YouTube, and Twitter can increase or decrease the effectiveness of health promotion interventions by providing access to at-risk audiences. Social media influencers are defined as people online who are followed by others and from whom they receive advice regarding purchasing products/ services, ultimately influencing attitudes and behavior through their credentials. In this study, attention was drawn to social media influencers in creating health behavior change based on the literature, and the effect of influencers on followers and businesses was tried to be comprehensively evaluated. Social networking sites offer an important means for increasing the accessibility and enabling new forms of health communication between the public and medical social influencers. In the literature, it has been found that social media influencers have an effect on many issues such as smoking cessation, increasing knowledge against flu vaccine, diet, and exercise, food choices, etc. Mothers also use social media actively and impressive impact on child nutrition, smoking, and alcohol encouraging the use of the content on the restriction of the skin, cosmetic products that affect the health of the inspection, and scientific studies on topics such as increasing physical activity to be done in the coming years will shape the debate in both Bioethics and public health policies. The insufficient number of studies in the literature has limited our study. It is recommended to increase the research on the effect of social media influencers on creating health behavior change.