304 - Is Social Media a Growing or Declining Educational Method in Pediatric Education Over 10 Years?

Publication Number: 304.5814

Donna M. D'Alessandro, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States; Michael D'Alessandro, University of Iowa Stead Family Children's Hospital, Iowa City, IA, United States

Background: Social media (SM) has become the dominant window into the Internet, supplanting the Web. Some medical educators have followed their learners from the Web to SM through the Free Open Access Medical Education (FOAM) movement that promotes free and openly accessible medical educational content. FOAM uses hashtags to bring order to the chaos of medical SM.

Objective: The goal was to determine whether SM is a growing or declining educational method in pediatric education by measuring usageof common FOAM hashtags on SM platforms.

Design/Methods: Yearly usage of FOAM hashtags was studied on X© and Instagram© in December from 2015- 2024 including general medical education (#FOAMed, #MedEd), and pediatric education (#FOAMPed). Participants, posts and impressions generated by the posts were measured. On Facebook©, overall hashtag usage could not be measured.

Results: Overall usage of X hashtags was significant and stable over the course of the study until the last year when it decreased significantly. #MedEd was used on average by 12,550 participants/mo who made ~ 32,700 posts/mo leading to an average of 111 million post impressions/mo. #FOAMed was used on average by 12,200 participants/mo who made ~ 31,000 posts/mo leading to an average of 78 million post impressions/mo. #FOAMPed was used on average by 400 participants/mo who made ~ 650 posts/mo leading to an average of 1.4 million post impressions/mo. On Instagram, overall hashtag usage was slightly increased up to 3X but absolute usage was infinitesimally small with #MedEd, #FOAMed and #FOAMPed used on ~ 4,000, 1,000, and 20 posts/mo. respectively.

Conclusion(s): FOAM has its largest presence on X, a much smaller presence on Instagram, and an unknown presence on Facebook. This may be attributed to X's emphasis on hashtag use and its interactive nature. Instagram also emphasizes hashtag use, but it is not as interactive. Facebook does not emphasize hashtag use. While SM use overall continues to increase rapidly, its use as an educational method in pediatric education over 10 years on X is decreasing significantly and on Instagram its use as an educational method is stable to increasing. Reasons may include: both medical educators and learners are unaware of FOAM and thus do not tag and search for content with relevant hashtags, X, where FOAM mainly occurs, is the only major SM platform that is not growing, and individuals may not want or are apprehensive to use SM for professional activities.