Privacy Concerns vs. Personalized Health Content: Two Sides of Social Media Use for Pregnant Individuals (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND Frequently lacking immediate access to care providers, pregnant individuals often seek information online to address their evolving physical and mental health needs. OBJECTIVE Given social media’s increasing prominence as a source of news and information, this study investigated the extent to which patients may be willing to disclose personal health information to social media companies in order to obtain personalized health content. METHODS We designed and deployed a survey to pregnant patients worldwide electronically in 2023. We utilized the classical Internet Users' Information Privacy Concerns (IUIPC) model to examine how privacy concerns modulate pregnant individuals’ behaviors and beliefs about risk and trust while using social media for health purposes. RESULTS Among 317 respondents who initiated the survey, 265 respondents remained in the study providing complete responses. Among them, 55% indicated willingness to provide their personalized health information in exchange to receiving personalized health content via social media, while 26% were uncertain and 19% opposed. Parallel to pregnant individuals’ willingness to share, we find that they have more heightened privacy concerns and their use of social media for information seeking is largely impacted by their trust with the platforms. Our estimated IUIPC model results are statistically significant and qualitatively align with the classic IUIPC model for the general population previously found in an e-commerce context. CONCLUSIONS We find that more than half of the pregnant individuals are open to sharing their personal health information to receive personalized content about health via social media, although they have more privacy concerns than the general population. This study emphasizes a needed policy around protection of health data on social media for the pregnancy population and beyond.