+- Ethical Tech Developer Forum (https://ethicaltechdevforum.com)
+-- Forum: General (https://ethicaltechdevforum.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=1)
+--- Forum: Social Media Component (https://ethicaltechdevforum.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=2)
+--- Thread: Social Networking for Health (/showthread.php?tid=13)
Social Networking for Health - digital.health.empowerment - 09-30-2025
Social Networking for Health
G. Keith Watson
Colorado State University Global
HCM 505: Principles of Population Health
Instructor: Mark Hutchinson
Due September 28 , 2025
Social Networking for Health
Social media platforms, such as Facebook, X, and many others with various formats and business models, all have one characteristic in common. They make possible the widespread dissemination of information provided by both members and advertisers of various stripes to potentially interested users. The information can be personal regarding the member or it can be commercial free speech, but the ones most relevant to public health and engagement of individuals in their own healthcare challenges and goals is that from authoritative government and nonprofit healthcare sources. It is possible also for interested commercial organizations to contribute to this stream, such as could be done by companies promoting their fitness applications or fitness coaching or consultation services. One major issue is that the platforms with the most commercial success themselves implement business models that control the connections between users of various kinds through engagement driving algorithms, limiting the utility for targeting effective messages and information to those who would likely benefit most from them. These companies are considered the winners in the social media technology competition merely because they have the highest market capitalization, meaning they provide the most value to passive investors who need no other interest in the company than the profit they can derive. Because they are the business winners, their platforms are considered the normal and inevitable technology design and therefore an example that should be followed by all others. This is unfortunate since it draws material and human capital, public attention, and potential healthcare information source users away from more effective designs which can deliver targeted value using the same surveillance methods and artificial intelligence applied to the data collected.
Consider the potential healthcare applications of social media. It could include user search and discovery features making finding of potentially helpful healthcare information possible, which in turn can lead to discovery and research on the providers which can provide the services or products referenced in the content. If like Wikipedia no paid advertising is allowed, but rather matching is done through express user interest analysis, provider organizations can still be required to subscribe as providers to receive interested user references. Raising basic awareness about prevalent health issues and respecting unhealthy behaviors and positive improvements in targetable communities is one type of proactive intervention activity that can be designed and implemented once enough user search and voluntary content engagement activity can be analyzed. The usual social media platform completely lacks this potential. From this information, support networks of users with similar issues can be constructed virtually and provider organizations can be allowed to insert information respecting their services into the content flows of such, again for a reasonable subscription fee. Early disease detection and prevention can be facilitated through both structured and unstructured information gathering, again from actual user interest derived from their search activity. There are already diagnostic questionnaires online, presumably based on standard diagnostic flow charts, and the same concept can be implemented in a more personalized way backed by artificial intelligence supplemented with the search and other interest evidence provided by the user. This could easily be implemented as a chat service.
Some of the usual negative impacts associated with social media platforms, such as the well known issue of algorithmic promotion of engaging misinformation and disinformation, regarding healthcare and health impacting behaviors in particular, can be entirely eliminated provided we have the user’s permission to analyze their contributed content with healthcare science trained large language model technology. This term of use would have to be expressly checked off by each user up front to avoid the loss of trust that would inevitably occur later otherwise. Cyberbullying and harassment are easily discovered even in a massively popular user base using the same AI technology. Within virtual support groups, there is likely to be a lot of very personal information exchanged, so access may have to be controlled for some and security and privacy will have to enforced rigorously. Guaranteeing up front that the user’s information will not be sold or provided to any other party or organization except in ways that they expressly authorize would be another term of service that the user would check off on before using the platform. Further, because the user is in a secure, protected support environment which is focused on their particular health issues, the likelihood of competition through social comparison is mitigated if not eliminated.
Much of this could be accomplished with current social media platforms if they modified their designs to include such features for the purpose of contributing to the public good. Their opinions of themselves include the assertion that simply connecting people with engagement driving algorithms is such a tremendous contribution to civilization that they are already inherently great contributors to social change for the better. When seen in the cold light of day, their designs are entirely controlling of user attention in a way which deliberately promotes engagement with the most motivating material, rather than that which is the most beneficial or useful to the particular user. This works to the advantage of their paid advertisers, making the social media companies huge profits and giving them massive and frequently disruptive social power. This is marketed implicitly as a great revolt against the previous organization of information delivery from the top through TV and radio (The revolution will not be televised). Improvements are therefore not planned, so there is a huge market for better designs, the chief obstacle being complacent acceptance of the current normal in social evolution, for profit social monitoring and algorithm driven association.