Preferences of Young People in the Use of Facebook as a Health Education Tool for HPV

Abstract

The accessibility and popularity of social networks makes them appropriate tools for promotion and prevention interventions in health, reaching a large audience with greater efficiency. One of its most attractive features is interaction, which not only allows great diffusion of the messages, but also supplies them with greater interest and credibility. Platforms such as Facebook are very popular among young people, a high risk group for Human papilloma virus (HPV) infection due to ignorance, prejudice and sexual behavior that is risked and active. The objective of this research is to know the preferences and attitudes of young people towards (1) interaction and (2) type of information about HPV on Facebook. Increasing our knowledge in this area will help to make interventions in this field more useful. Through a questionnaire validated in previous research, was made a cross-sectional descriptive study of the preferences of 120 young universities in the use of facebook as a tool for health promotion about HPV. More than half of the participants would follow a page on the HPV to be informed and share information on prevention, vaccines and campaigns. The preferred resources were: multimedia, testimonials and articles by specialists. They prefer to "share" to "create themselves" messages. A group of subjects who reject the use of the tool is detected, arguing that they would not do it for (1) a lack of interest, (2) because people can relate them personally to the sickness or (3) for possible bugs and criticisms.