Social Media Continues to Be a Health Resource for Consumers

by Dave Emery

In the past year, 165 million adults used the Internet for health research. Of those:

• Nearly 87 million (53%) said that social networking was a reason for accessing the Internet in last 30 days.
• 6 million (4%) used or to obtain/research healthcare information.

More than half (55%) of U.S. Internet users used social media for health and wellness in 2012. Here’s what they’re doing:

• 26% visit user-generated content sites (e.g. Wikipedia)
• 23% watch informational video clips about health and wellness
• 23% read blogs about a particular health topic

While more than half of adult Internet users are using social media for health, almost one in four says that they frequently/occasionally use social networking sites as online health resources. This number continues to increase year-over-year.

When broken down by age, we see that adults ages 35-44 are most likely to use the Internet for health research and frequently/occasionally use social networking sites for health and wellness.

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