A Study of the Demographics of Web-Based Health-Related Social Media Users

BACKGROUND The rapid spread of Web-based social media in recent years has impacted how patients share health-related information. However, little work has studied the demographics of these users. OBJECTIVE Our aim was to study the demographics of users who participate in health-related Web-based social outlets to identify possible links to health care disparities. METHODS We analyze and compare three different types of health-related social outlets: (1) general Web-based social networks, Twitter and Google+, (2) drug review websites, and (3) health Web forums. We focus on the following demographic attributes: age, gender, ethnicity, location, and writing level. We build and evaluate domain-specific classifiers to infer missing data where possible. The estimated demographic statistics are compared against various baselines, such as Internet and social networks usage of the population. RESULTS We found that (1) drug review websites and health Web forums are dominated by female users, (2) the participants of health-related social outlets are generally older with the exception of the 65+ years bracket, (3) blacks are underrepresented in health-related social networks, (4) users in areas with better access to health care participate more in Web-based health-related social outlets, and (5) the writing level of users in health-related social outlets is significantly lower than the reading level of the population. CONCLUSIONS We identified interesting and actionable disparities in the participation of various demographic groups to various types of health-related social outlets. These disparities are significantly distinct from the disparities in Internet usage or general social outlets participation.