Social media impacts to behavior change among adolescents

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Muganga Mark

Strategic Communication Advisor, Uganda Youth Alliance, Uganda.

: J Virol Antivir Res

Abstract

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Background: In Uganda, 78% of the populations are adolescents who face many Sexual and reproductive Health challenges and results from lack of SRH related information. Currently, adolescents are the leading social media users almost at 72% and subscription varies at 81.34% for Facebook, 4.22% Twitter and You Tube 1.79%. Use of social media has become a new trend used for sharing and empowering young people with information. Using social media for Sexual Reproductive Health promotion has successfully impacted on Uganda’s adolescent health behavior.

Materials and Methods: The internet and the social media are now pervasive and ubiquitous. By the end of 2015, the Internet had been used by 3.2 billion people, 2 billion of them from developing countries, with over 78% of social media users being young people in Uganda, I use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp and Wordpress to empower young people with SRHR information and this is done through on daily basis by disseminating SRHR information. On Facebook I reach up to 370 young people and Twitter over 150 young people per day, Instagram over 10-15 and on Wordpress over 20-30 per month. This has been achieved through campaigns for example “I KnowKati” campaign which focuses on young people aged 25-35 year olds as these target groups are being affected by reproductive health challenges and HIV largely due to inadequate information. Through the iKnow campaign, we empowered young people with information to seek for SRHR services such as HIV testing and counseling closer to them. Through “Know Your Status Afande,” this focused on encouraging police officers to know their HIV status. And finally managed to reach more than 2,058 people per post yet I used to share five posts via twitter. More than 70% of the campaign objectives were been achieved.

Results: The number of young people accessing accurate sexual and reproductive health information and services increased which has helped them to make right choices; the uptake of health services has also increased among adolescents for example family planning use of modern contraceptives has increased significantly since 2000, nearly doubling (from 18% to 26%) between 2000 and 2011 among youth who are sexually active and The proportion of women (ages 15-49) who have tested for HIV and received their results in the past 12 months increased from 47.7% in 2012 to 57.1% in 2014 and from 37.4% to 45.6% among men.

Conclusions: Many young people access health information through social media as shown in the results. There is need to address issues hindering adolescents from using social media. Use of social media and improving access to online accurate information is highly recommended to avert some of the sexual and reproductive health myth among the adolescents. Before health promoters and researchers carry out sexual health promotion interventions they should consider the possible ethical, confidentiality and anonymity issues linked to the use of these media especially to the audience.

Biography

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E-mail: macacid24@gmail.com