Multi-purpose use of social media for health purposes: scooping review of systematic reviews
Authors: L.N. Ozurumba-Dwight , J.O. Soyinka , OC Iloka , M.C. Korie , L.N. Kevin-Asogwa , C.S. Ogbonna , C.E. Odu , UN Gadzama , K.O. Iyevhobu , O.O. Enwere , B. Anokwu 
Published: May 2022

Background: Social media has over the scores of past decades, created a paradigm shift in human activities, communications, meetings, products sales and consultations from physical presence to virtual platforms for achieving them, across several sectors of life, with positive and negative attributes. This study was set out to examine for a perceived multi-purpose use social media for health purposes and usage flexibility, through a scooping review of systematic reviews, with data mined from systematic review studies conducted on social media use for health issues; and proffer avenues to avoid and overcome hazards associated with its usage. The articles we retrieved were those deposited in five Journals database repositories.Method: We engaged a scooping review of systematic reviews based studies in which we mined for related articles from five Journals data bases, namely PubMed, PubMed Central, BMC Journals and Mendeley-Elsevier, between the period 10th July 2018, and 28th June 2021. We used specific search words based on our inclusion criteria for selection of articles for this study. In all, 23 studies were selected; after we obtained records from our search words inputted into the databases, studied the abstracts and contents of full works to screen for studies that met our inclusion criteria. We selected articles for our scooping review and using adjusted PRIMSA guidelines as required for a scooping review. The analysis engaged percentages and summations. Results and conclusion: Analysis for multi-purpose use of social media from extracted data indicated diverse fields in the health sector to which social media usage is applied, such as in Health communication (3 articles-13%), Reproductive health (1 article-4.4%), Preventive and curative health (9 articles -39.1%), Public health and health Nutrition (5 article -21.7%), Mental health and Psychiatry (4 articles -17.4%), and Surgical health (1 article -4.4%).Further examination of retrieved data for multi-purpose use revealed the existence of at least 6 articles in which interventional use of social media for health purposes where examined and brought to expression.We found flexible dynamic use of social media with beneficial values indicated in at least 21 articles (91.3% of all articles) and hazards expressed from at least 9 articles (39.1% of all articles). Then within each of the identified health fields we found flexibilities in diverse sub-fields in the health sector. Our scooping review and basic analyses indicated clues that the use of social media is multi-purpose and with flexibilities of usage. Since this is a scooping review based on a concept, it is not totally definitive. As such, our future studies and those of others can compliment this study with deeper assessments using more rigorous systematic reviews and meta-analysis. However, there are areas and avenues from which we can continually optimize the benefits from use of social media for health purposes across healthcare intersects from medical care, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology medical-care products, health nutrition based foods derived from agricultural-sector, technological devices for health care, and health communication among others, despite observed hazards in its usage.