WORLD JOURNAL OF ADVANCE
HEALTHCARE RESEARCH

AbdulRahman N. Alghamdi*, Meshari Hamed Altowairqi, Mohammad Abdullah basurrah, Muhannad Mohammed Alharthi, Yosef Zaben Alotaibi, Abdullah Ammash Alharbi, Mazen Abdulmohsen Almalki and Ahmed M. Abdelshakour

ABSTRACT

Background: Over the last decade, social media has integrated into our daily lives and has complemented almost all parts of our life activities. Some of the popular social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Snap chat etc. allows people to share and interact online contents and also helps to connect like-minded people. In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, social media is becoming more popular among the citizens and according to the Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) usage of social media increased to 91.7%. Methodology: A descriptive cross-sectional study using a pretested and validated questionnaire were employed among people residing in Saudi Arabia. The questionnaire was administered online and a minimum sample of 1740 was calculated for our study. Results: We found that 42% of participants spend 3-5 hours per day using social media and 24% use it for more than 6 hours per day. Only 9% of participants agreed that they use it for one hour or less. When participants were asked about their favourite social media, 36% said that it is Snap Chat, 31% mentioned it like Twitter, 29% selected it as Instagram and only 4% selected for Facebook. Conclusion: the majority of the participants are using social media for understanding and discussing health-disease related topics. Users should be able to identify the sources and reliability of the health information before sharing online in social media. English.