Social media is also beneficial outside controlled interventions because it can increase citizens’ awareness of public issues and allow them to take a more active and better informed role in their communities (10–13). In an effort to prevent NCDs, social media interventions can help people increase their physical activity levels (6) and reduce their sugar and fat consumption (7,8), enhance motivation among online health programs users (3,5,9), and deliver nutritional or diabetes education (4,7). Interventions involving social media can influence behaviors to improve lifestyles and metabolic indicators of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) (3–5). This perspective emphasizes the benefits and limitations of social media, considering that they could effectively address public health nutrition problems. Social media can encourage citizen participation, optimize health systems, be an interactive space for science dissemination, support health policies, and promote healthy behaviors. In 2012, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched the global eHealth strategy to encourage the promotion, development, and evaluation of actions that involve these platforms (1,2). Social media online platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, are promising instruments to improve population health. In conclusion, the perspective highlights the role that health actors and governments should take to maximize the benefits of social media use. Because social media use in public health is a new field of study, this perspective also focuses on the current limitations and gaps in evidence that need to be addressed to translate the best practices into policy recommendations. To show social media’s positive impact on population health literacy, we briefly describe an inexpensive systematic communication strategy implemented in our research center through 2 social media platforms, the lessons learned, and the strategy’s short-term results. We aimed to emphasize the benefits of using social media to promote health that have been documented to date. Social media platforms are low-cost tools that can be used to address issues in public health nutrition, especially in countries where health-related institutions experience economic limitations.
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