title: Effects of Social Network Exposure on Nutritional Learning: Development of an Online Educational Platform.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook have the potential to enhance online public health interventions, in part, as they provide social exposure and reinforcement.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The objective of the study was to evaluate whether social exposure provided by SNSs enhances the effects of online public health interventions.
  
  
  METHODS
  As a sample intervention, we developed Food Hero, an online platform for nutritional education in which players feed a virtual character according to their own nutritional needs and complete a set of virtual sport challenges. The platform was developed in 2 versions: a "private version" in which a user can see only his or her own score, and a "social version" in which a user can see other players' scores, including preexisting Facebook friends. We assessed changes in participants' nutritional knowledge using 4 quiz scores and 3 menu-assembly scores. Monitoring feeding and exercising attempts assessed engagement with the platform.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The 2 versions of the platform were randomly assigned between a study group (30 members receiving the social version) and a control group (33 members, private version). The study group's performance on the quizzes gradually increased over time, relative to that of the control group, becoming significantly higher by the fourth quiz (P=.02). Furthermore, the study group's menu-assembly scores improved over time compared to the first score, whereas the control group's performance deteriorated. Study group members spent an average of 3:40 minutes assembling each menu compared to 2:50 minutes in the control group, and performed an average of 1.58 daily sport challenges, compared to 1.21 in the control group (P=.03).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This work focused on isolating the SNSs' social effects in order to help guide future online interventions. Our results indicate that the social exposure provided by SNSs is associated with increased engagement and learning in an online nutritional educational platform.
authors.affiliation: Braun School of Public Health, Hebrew University School of Medicine, Jerusalem, Israel.
authors.forename: Noa
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8811-7825
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Dagan
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5797-9086
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Beskin
authors.forename: Mayer
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3199-9641
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Brezis
authors.forename: Ben Y
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9908-5523
authors.initials: BY
authors.lastname: Reis
keywords: nutrition requirements; obesity; public health; social networking sites