Shan Yi, Ji Meng, Xie Wenxiu, Zhang Xiaomin, Ng Chok Harrison, Li Rongying, Qian Xiaobo, Lam Kam-Yiu, Chow Chi-Yin, Hao Tianyong
Nantong University Nantong China.
University of Sydney Sydney Australia.
JMIR Infodemiology. 2022 Nov 15;2(2):e38453. doi: 10.2196/38453. eCollection 2022 Jul-Dec.
COVID-19-related health inequalities were reported in some studies, showing the failure in public health and communication. Studies investigating the contexts and causes of these inequalities pointed to the contribution of communication inequality or poor health literacy and information access to engagement with health care services. However, no study exclusively dealt with health inequalities induced by the use of social media during COVID-19.
This review aimed to identify and summarize COVID-19-related health inequalities induced by the use of social media and the associated contributing factors and to characterize the relationship between the use of social media and health disparities during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A systematic review was conducted on this topic in light of the protocol of the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) 2020 statement. Keyword searches were performed to collect papers relevant to this topic in multiple databases: PubMed (which includes MEDLINE [Ovid] and other subdatabases), ProQuest (which includes APA PsycINFO, Biological Science Collection, and others), ACM Digital Library, and Web of Science, without any year restriction. Of the 670 retrieved publications, 10 were initially selected based on the predefined selection criteria. These 10 articles were then subjected to quality analysis before being analyzed in the final synthesis and discussion.
Of the 10 articles, 1 was further removed for not meeting the quality assessment criteria. Finally, 9 articles were found to be eligible and selected for this review. We derived the characteristics of these studies in terms of publication years, journals, study locations, locations of study participants, study design, sample size, participant characteristics, and potential risk of bias, and the main results of these studies in terms of the types of social media, social media use-induced health inequalities, associated factors, and proposed resolutions. On the basis of the thematic synthesis of these extracted data, we derived 4 analytic themes, namely health information inaccessibility-induced health inequalities and proposed resolutions, misinformation-induced health inequalities and proposed resolutions, disproportionate attention to COVID-19 information and proposed resolutions, and higher odds of social media-induced psychological distress and proposed resolutions.
This paper was the first systematic review on this topic. Our findings highlighted the great value of studying the COVID-19-related health knowledge gap, the digital technology-induced unequal distribution of health information, and the resulting health inequalities, thereby providing empirical evidence for understanding the relationship between social media use and health inequalities in the context of COVID-19 and suggesting practical solutions to such disparities. Researchers, social media, health practitioners, and policy makers can draw on these findings to promote health equality while minimizing social media use-induced health inequalities.
一些研究报告了与新冠疫情相关的健康不平等现象，表明公共卫生和沟通方面存在不足。调查这些不平等现象的背景和原因的研究指出，沟通不平等、健康素养低下以及获取信息的困难对参与医疗服务产生了影响。然而，尚无研究专门探讨新冠疫情期间社交媒体使用所导致的健康不平等问题。
本综述旨在识别和总结社交媒体使用所引发的与新冠疫情相关的健康不平等现象及其相关影响因素，并描述新冠疫情期间社交媒体使用与健康差距之间的关系。
根据PRISMA（系统评价与Meta分析优先报告条目）2020声明的方案，对该主题进行了系统综述。通过关键词检索在多个数据库中收集与该主题相关的论文：PubMed（包括MEDLINE [Ovid]和其他子数据库）、ProQuest（包括APA PsycINFO、生物科学文集等）、ACM数字图书馆和Web of Science，无年份限制。在检索到的670篇出版物中，根据预定义的选择标准初步筛选出10篇。然后对这10篇文章进行质量分析，再进行最终的综合分析和讨论。
在这10篇文章中，有1篇因未达到质量评估标准而被进一步排除。最终，9篇文章符合要求并被选入本综述。我们从发表年份、期刊、研究地点、研究参与者所在地、研究设计、样本量、参与者特征和潜在偏倚风险等方面分析了这些研究的特点，并从社交媒体类型、社交媒体使用引发的健康不平等现象、相关因素和建议的解决方案等方面分析了这些研究的主要结果。基于对这些提取数据的主题综合分析，我们得出了4个分析主题，即健康信息获取困难导致的健康不平等现象及建议的解决方案、错误信息导致的健康不平等现象及建议的解决方案、对新冠疫情信息的关注不均衡及建议的解决方案，以及社交媒体引发心理困扰的较高几率及建议的解决方案。
本文是关于该主题的首次系统综述。我们的研究结果凸显了研究与新冠疫情相关的健康知识差距、数字技术导致的健康信息分配不均以及由此产生的健康不平等现象的重要价值，从而为理解新冠疫情背景下社交媒体使用与健康不平等之间的关系提供了实证依据，并针对此类差距提出了切实可行的解决方案。研究人员、社交媒体、健康从业者和政策制定者可以借鉴这些研究结果，在尽量减少社交媒体使用导致的健康不平等现象的同时促进健康平等。
