An Overview of Social Media Use in the Field of Public Health Nutrition: Benefits, Scope, Limitations, and a Latin American Experience

Social media platforms are low-cost tools that can be used to address issues in public health nutrition, especially in countries where health-related institutions experience economic limitations. We aimed to emphasize the benefits of using social media to promote health that have been documented to date. To show social media’s positive impact on population health literacy, we briefly describe an inexpensive systematic communication strategy implemented in our research center through 2 social media platforms, the lessons learned, and the strategy’s short-term results. Because social media use in public health is a new field of study, this perspective also focuses on the current limitations and gaps in evidence that need to be addressed to translate the best practices into policy recommendations. In conclusion, the perspective highlights the role that health actors and governments should take to maximize the benefits of social media use.