I’m so excited to share that another research project near and dear to my heart was published earlier this month in Journal of Drugs and Dermatology! You can find a link to the article here (you may need institution access). The title of the paper was “Dermatology on Instagram: An Analysis of Hashtags” and what we hoped to do was figure out 1) what was being posted about medical and procedural dermatology topics and 2) who was doing the posting.

My main takeaways:

• Dermatology-related topics are QUITE popular on social media! Over 10 million posts were found when we queried 43 dermatology-related hashtags
• Board-certified dermatologists provide a very small minority of posts (5%) about dermatology related topics on Instagram
• Board certified dermatologists post education content 93% of the time; this inspires me to personally post more educational content to share what I’ve learned in my field with the rest of you!

Check out the abstract below (and the full link if you have institution access!) for more information.

Introduction

Though growing in popularity, health-related information available online is not consistently accurate. We sought to examine the content and sources of top dermatology-related posts on Instagram, the most popular online photo-sharing platform today.

Methods

The top 43 most commonly used hashtags, or keywords to tag content, for medical and procedural dermatology were queried on Instagram. The “top 9” posts, automatically highlighted by Instagram based on highest engagement level, were then analyzed for content and source of the original posters.

Results

10,197,884 Instagram posts were tagged with the 43 hashtags queried for this study. Based on an internal private algorithm, Instagram highlighted 387 of these as “top posts” and 258 posts met inclusion criteria. 91 posters (35%) self-identified as working in the healthcare field, with 40 posters (16%) self-identifying as dermatologists. Only 14 posts (5% of top posts) were made by American Board of Dermatology-certified dermatologists. Content posted by board-certified dermatologists was educational in nature 93% of the time and self-promotional 7% of the time. In contrast, non-physician healthcare professionals posted self-promotional content 56% of the time and non-dermatologist physicians 67% of the time.

Discussion

Instagram is rapidly becoming a powerful tool, both for consumers to search for health information and for dermatologists to reach the public. Our study shows that the vast majority of dermatology-related top posts on Instagram are made by individuals without formal dermatology training, and that board-certified dermatologists are more likely to post educational content rather than self-promotional. It is important that dermatologists consider utilizing social media platforms like Instagram for education and advocacy.

What is the most significant finding of this study?

Board-certified dermatologists provide only 5% of the top dermatology-related posts on Instagram, the world’s most popular photo-sharing social media platform, and they are more likely to post educational rather than self-promotional content compared to other physicians and healthcare professionals.