Can a Social Media Application be a Valid Educational Tool for Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Patients?

Background: TikTok (ByteDance, Beijing, China) is the fastest growing social media application (SMA) to date and has become a major source of information for medicine. The rising use of media platforms by patients and practitioners alike plays a significant role in the perception of healthcare. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify the presence and popularity of oral and maxillofacial surgery content on the SMA, to measure whether the information shared is useful for viewers, and whether there are differences in quality of the videos between video content producer groups. Study design, setting, and sample: A cross-sectional study was used to evaluate oral and maxillofacial surgery content on the SMA. Included videos were published during a 3-month period (November 16, 2021 to February 17, 2022) and mentioned “oral surgery” or “wisdom teeth” in the video description, title, or hashtag. Independent variable: The independent variable was video content producer—content created by health professionals versus laypersons. Main outcome variable: Quality of each video was determined by the information in the video and its usefulness, using the Global Quality Scale (GQS) criteria. Covariates: Topic was categorized as educational or anecdotal. Popularity was measured by the number of likes accumulated. Analyses: Statistical analysis was performed using 2-sample t-tests. Statistical significance was achieved with a P value < .05 with 95% confidence interval. Results: Of 558 videos searched, 426 videos met study criteria. GQS score was greater in health professional videos (M_HP = 3.30) versus layperson videos (M_L = 2.05) (P < .05). Most video content producers were laypersons (69%) and videos were mostly anecdotal (87%). Health professional videos had greater popularity than layperson videos (P < .05). Health professionals and laypersons averaged 25,148 likes and 2,109 likes, respectively. All videos combined totaled 3,939,685 likes. Conclusion: By analyzing GQS and the popularity of videos, it has shown that health professionals produced higher quality videos along with greater number of likes. With 39% of videos by health professionals being educational, it shows that we are using the SMA to instruct patients. However, there is still room to produce more educational rather than anecdotal videos with the goal to provide accurate information to patients.