Opportunities and challenges of social media for oral health literacy improvement: a qualitative investigation based on Iranian dentists' perspectives.

backgroundDespite the possible impacts of social media on oral health literacy, the specific challenges and opportunities in this particular setting remain underexplored. The current research objective was identify the opportunities and challenges of social media for oral health literacy based on Iranian dentists' perspectives.

methodsIn the current qualitative investigation, a semi-structured interview was conducted with 24 dentists utilizing a purposive snowball sampling method. The analysis of the data was performed using thematic analysis in the MAXQDA 10 software.

resultsThe analysis of the interview data led to recognition of six main themes and a total of 16 sub-themes. The three main themes identified as opportunities for using social media for oral health literacy include facilitating accessibility, popularizing, and supporting usability. Three identified challenges for oral health literacy include quality issues, incomplete understandability, and create bias in usability for oral health information. Social media platforms present unique opportunities for enhancing information accessibility through increasing information encountering, interactive question-answering, and communication empowerment. Providing opportunities for simplifying information, promoting the prevention of oral health diseases, and clarifying information claims are social media facilitate roles that can effectively make information more understandable. Moreover, social media platforms facilitate the use of oral health information by supporting decision-making, dental counseling presentations, and experience sharing. Misinformation, the complexity of information quality evaluation and privacy, and ethical and security concerns are significant social media challenges for oral information accessibility. Insufficent published information and creating fear by reading health information (cyberchondria) are social media challenges that affect the understandability of information. Ignoring content disclaimers and misleading advertising are two challenges within social media that hinder the usability of oral health information.

conclusionSocial media acts as a dual-faceted method for oral health literacy, providing both opportunities and challenges. Confronting the obstacles associated with social media demands the creation of solutions that strengthen their positive attributes.