Training on social media safety for pediatricians improved rates of patient counseling on the topic and adolescents’ social media behavior.

“This study arose, in part, from an enthusiasm among pediatricians wanting to understand how they could best support families in navigating social media for their kids,” Megan Moreno, MD, MSEd, MPH, explains. “We know that pediatricians can serve as a trusted source of information for families, and this study reflects that.”

Dr. Moreno and colleagues tested a social media counseling intervention aimed at promoting safe social media use among youth through a randomized controlled trial. The researchers enrolled pediatric primary care practices between 2011 and 2013 and recruited youth participants during clinical visits. Study outcomes included media behaviors and caregiver communication. Multivariate regression models assessed associations between social media counseling and the pediatrician’s counseling score, and multivariate logistic regression evaluated four social media behavior outcomes.

“This study was done as a randomized controlled trial, which can provide the very best level of evidence that an intervention does or does not work, and was conducted with pediatricians in their offices—so it was as close to a real-world setting as possible,” Dr. Moreno notes.

Positive Results for Pediatricians & Adolescents

The study, published in The Journal of Adolescent Health, included 249 pediatricians representing 120 practices. More than half (53%) were independent pediatric group practices, and more practices were in suburban communities (46%) versus rural (19%), non-inner city urban (19%), and inner-city urban (16%) settings. Dr. Moreno and colleagues randomly assigned 58 practices to the social media intervention arm.

“Could a brief training in social media lead to changes in how pediatricians counsel their patients? We found that the answer is YES!” Dr. Moreno says. “Training pediatricians in social media safety led to pediatricians consistently providing this counseling.”

The greatest predictor of a clinician providing social media counseling was being trained on such counseling (adjusted OR, 4.94; 95% CI, 3.83-6.37), Dr. Moreno says (Table).

“This may feel like an ‘of course’ moment,” she continues. “However, when we were planning this intervention, we heard concerns from pediatricians that there could be generational barriers to learning this content or feeling comfortable providing counseling on this topic. There were no demographic differences among pediatricians willing to provide this counseling, and if they had training, they would provide the counseling, put those concerns to rest.”

The researchers also reported positive findings for adolescent patients who received social media counseling from their pediatricians.

“The intervention had a positive impact on reducing teens’ friending of strangers on social media and on teens communicating with their parents about social media,” Dr. Moreno says. “We did not find an impact on screen time, but, in recent years, the field has moved away from screen time as an accurate or meaningful measure of social media safety.”

According to the study results, after 6 months, teens could recall receiving social media counseling, which aligns with previous findings that adolescents can accurately recall counseling from a clinician. Dr. Moreno and colleagues wrote that the counseling provided in the current study “may have been more memorable given the relevance and significance of social media to youth.”

Expanding Pediatricians’ Education & Families’ Involvement

The results underscore the role that pediatricians have in helping families navigate the use of media safely, says Dr. Moreno, who also serves as co-medical director of the Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health from the American Academy of Pediatrics. The organization “is dedicated to creating a healthy digital ecosystem for children and adolescents,” according to its website. Dr. Moreno notes that efforts are underway “to expand the training opportunities for pediatricians to be part of this work.”

Looking ahead to future studies, Dr. Moreno says research is needed to assess ways “to incorporate specific tools, such as the Family Media Plan from the American Academy of Pediatrics, into the counseling that pediatricians provide families to see if this increases uptake and use of this family-centered tool.”