title: "Friending" teens: systematic review of social media in adolescent and young adult health care.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Social media has emerged as a potentially powerful medium for communication with adolescents and young adults around their health choices.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The goal of this systematic review is to identify research on the use of social media for interacting with adolescents and young adults in order to achieve positive health outcomes.
  
  
  METHODS
  A MEDLINE/PubMed electronic database search was performed between January 1, 2002 and October 1, 2013, using terms to identify peer-reviewed research in which social media and other Web 2.0 technologies were an important feature. We used a systematic approach to retrieve papers and extract relevant data.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We identified 288 studies involving social media, of which 87 met criteria for inclusion; 75 studies were purely observational and 12 were interventional. The ways in which social media was leveraged by these studies included (1) observing adolescent and young adult behavior (n=77), (2) providing health information (n=13), (3) engaging the adolescent and young adult community (n=17), and (4) recruiting research participants (n=23). Common health topics addressed included high-risk sexual behaviors (n=23), alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use (n=19), Internet safety (n=8), mental health issues (n=18), medical conditions (n=11), or other specified issues (n=12). Several studies used more than one social media platform and addressed more than one health-related topic.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Social media technologies offer an exciting new means for engaging and communicating with adolescents and young adults; it has been successfully used to engage this age group, identify behaviors, and provide appropriate intervention and education. Nevertheless, the majority of studies to date have been preliminary and limited in their methodologies, and mostly center around evaluating how adolescents and young adults use social media and the resulting implications on their health. Although these explorations are essential, further exploration and development of these strategies into building effective interventions is necessary.
authors.affiliation: Massachusetts General Hospital, Department of Pediatrics, Boston, MA, United States.
authors.forename: Lael M
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1711-8227
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Yonker
authors.forename: Shiyi
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6496-8534
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zan
authors.forename: Christina V
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5415-146X
authors.initials: CV
authors.lastname: Scirica
authors.forename: Kamal
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0122-8002
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Jethwani
authors.forename: T Bernard
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5668-1066
authors.initials: TB
authors.lastname: Kinane
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D003142:Communication; D005260:Female; D015438:Health Behavior; D006293:Health Promotion / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012725:Sexual Behavior; D061108:Social Media; D060756:Social Networking; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: adolescents; health; social media; social networking sites; young adults