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Health-Related Internet Use by Children and Adolescents: Systematic Review
BACKGROUND: The internet is widely used by children and adolescents, who generally have a high level of competency with technology. Thus, the internet has become a great resource for supporting youth self-care and health-related services. However, few studies have explored adolescents’ internet use...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
JMIR Publications
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5904452/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29615385 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/jmir.7731 |
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author | Park, Eunhee Kwon, Misol |
author_facet | Park, Eunhee Kwon, Misol |
author_sort | Park, Eunhee |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: The internet is widely used by children and adolescents, who generally have a high level of competency with technology. Thus, the internet has become a great resource for supporting youth self-care and health-related services. However, few studies have explored adolescents’ internet use for health-related matters. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this systematic literature review was to examine the phenomenon of children and adolescents’ health-related internet use and to identify gaps in the research. METHODS: A total of 19 studies were selected from a search of major electronic databases: PubMed, Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature, and PsycINFO using the following search terms: “health-related internet use,” “eHealth,” “Internet use for health-related purpose,” “Web-based resource,” “health information seeking,” and “online resource,” combined with “child,” “adolescent,” “student,” “youth,” and “teen.” The children’s and adolescents’ ages were limited to 24 years and younger. The search was conducted from September 2015 to October 2017. The studies identified to contain youth (<24 years) health-related internet use were all published in peer-reviewed journals in the past 10 years; these studies examined general internet use seeking health care services, resources, information, or using the internet for health promotion and self-care. Studies were excluded if they explored the role of the internet as a modality for surveys, recruitment, or searching for relevant literature without specifically aiming to study participants’ health-related internet use; focused solely on quality assurance for specific websites; or were designed to test a specific internet-based intervention. RESULTS: Interesting patterns in adolescents’ health-related internet use, such as seeking preventative health care and specific information about medical issues, were identified. Quantitative studies reported rates of the internet use and access among youth, and the purpose and patterns of health-related internet use among youth were identified. A major objective of health-related internet use is to gain information, but there are inconsistencies in adolescents’ perceptions of health-related internet use. CONCLUSIONS: This study’s findings provide important information on how youth seek information and related support systems for their health care on the internet. The conceptual and methodological limitations of the identified studies, such as the lack of a theoretical background and unrepresentative samples, are discussed, and gaps within the studies are identified for future research. This review also suggests important features for potential Web-based health interventions for children and adolescents. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5904452 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | JMIR Publications |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-59044522018-04-24 Health-Related Internet Use by Children and Adolescents: Systematic Review Park, Eunhee Kwon, Misol J Med Internet Res Review BACKGROUND: The internet is widely used by children and adolescents, who generally have a high level of competency with technology. Thus, the internet has become a great resource for supporting youth self-care and health-related services. However, few studies have explored adolescents’ internet use for health-related matters. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this systematic literature review was to examine the phenomenon of children and adolescents’ health-related internet use and to identify gaps in the research. METHODS: A total of 19 studies were selected from a search of major electronic databases: PubMed, Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature, and PsycINFO using the following search terms: “health-related internet use,” “eHealth,” “Internet use for health-related purpose,” “Web-based resource,” “health information seeking,” and “online resource,” combined with “child,” “adolescent,” “student,” “youth,” and “teen.” The children’s and adolescents’ ages were limited to 24 years and younger. The search was conducted from September 2015 to October 2017. The studies identified to contain youth (<24 years) health-related internet use were all published in peer-reviewed journals in the past 10 years; these studies examined general internet use seeking health care services, resources, information, or using the internet for health promotion and self-care. Studies were excluded if they explored the role of the internet as a modality for surveys, recruitment, or searching for relevant literature without specifically aiming to study participants’ health-related internet use; focused solely on quality assurance for specific websites; or were designed to test a specific internet-based intervention. RESULTS: Interesting patterns in adolescents’ health-related internet use, such as seeking preventative health care and specific information about medical issues, were identified. Quantitative studies reported rates of the internet use and access among youth, and the purpose and patterns of health-related internet use among youth were identified. A major objective of health-related internet use is to gain information, but there are inconsistencies in adolescents’ perceptions of health-related internet use. CONCLUSIONS: This study’s findings provide important information on how youth seek information and related support systems for their health care on the internet. The conceptual and methodological limitations of the identified studies, such as the lack of a theoretical background and unrepresentative samples, are discussed, and gaps within the studies are identified for future research. This review also suggests important features for potential Web-based health interventions for children and adolescents. JMIR Publications 2018-04-03 /pmc/articles/PMC5904452/ /pubmed/29615385 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/jmir.7731 Text en ©Eunhee Park, Misol Kwon. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 03.04.2018. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://www.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included. |
spellingShingle | Review Park, Eunhee Kwon, Misol Health-Related Internet Use by Children and Adolescents: Systematic Review |
title | Health-Related Internet Use by Children and Adolescents: Systematic Review |
title_full | Health-Related Internet Use by Children and Adolescents: Systematic Review |
title_fullStr | Health-Related Internet Use by Children and Adolescents: Systematic Review |
title_full_unstemmed | Health-Related Internet Use by Children and Adolescents: Systematic Review |
title_short | Health-Related Internet Use by Children and Adolescents: Systematic Review |
title_sort | health-related internet use by children and adolescents: systematic review |
topic | Review |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5904452/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29615385 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/jmir.7731 |
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