Benefits of using Social Media to promote a healthy lifestyle

Social media campaign to promote a healthy lifestyle

The Impact of Social Media

-In this digital era, it seems like the information technology can play an important role in promoting physical activity to achieve a healthy lifestyle.

The power of social influence has been seen in both positive and negative. For example, negative behaviours posted by a peer on social media such as smoking and drinking makes observers more likely to do the same. Or if an overweight colleague constantly posts about his or her weight loss progress, which is a positive thing, you’re more likely to be motivated pursue weight loss goals as well.

-Positive behaviours are also powerful in social networks and can be harnessed for good. Social media can be utilized not only to encourage physical activity, but also to promote other beneficial things such as preventative care

-In a 2015 study published in the journal Preventive Medicine Reports, it was shown that putting people in the right kind of social environment is enough to interact with each other and even anonymous social interaction can promote behaviour change.

-Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have a number of useful features that could enhance social support interventions such as the ability of users to share their stories to others in real time. Majority of people have online social network accounts. The reach and functionality make social networking sites potentially effective tools in providing social support.

https://www.adhesion.co.nz/blog/social-media-usage-in-new-zealand
This article has loads of data and 'tips' for social media marketing that could be very helpful! -Emma

Brainstorming ideas:

-could create a hashtag trend to promote exercise. Get people to post pictures and get involved in exercise.

Other successful social media campaigns: preventing smoking

-The World Lung Foundation released an application on Facebook that allows users to add rotten teeth, throat tumors, bleeding brains and other smoking-related illnesses to their profile pictures or pictures of friends. Users placed the altered images on a generic pack of cigarettes and shared them. The application, named PackHead, was intended to raise awareness and support for graphic package warnings, which are more effective at communicating the harms of smoking than standard text.

-The Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MOHFW) Tobacco Control Programme launched a nationwide television, radio and YouTube campaign called “Surgeon.” The campaign featured cancer patients at Tata Memorial Cancer Hospital neck and throat cancer ward and highlighted the devastating consequences of smokeless tobacco to warn against its use. The campaign was produced in association with World Lung Foundation (WLF) and the Bloomberg Initiative to reduce Tobacco use.

The campaign video shows cancer surgeon Dr. Prashant Pawar as he conducts his rounds in one of the busiest head, neck and throat cancer wards in the world. The viewer sees the horrifying effects of mouth cancers caused by chewing tobacco as the surgeon consults with his patients – some as young as 18-years-old.

ONLINE ANTI-SMOKING GAMES

-The New Zealand Health Sponsorship Council created a series of online games targeted at younger children to discourage the uptake of smoking. The games were distributed for free via a number of online gaming sites.

Another great interactive feature, this from OxyGen in Australia, that lets YOU play doctor with a tobacco victim. Use a scalpel, syringe or tweezers to take body samples and see why this tobacco user may have died.