How effective are interactive social media interventions for changing health and health behaviors?: A Cochrane Review summary with commentary
Key Points
- Social media has an increasingly important role in health promotion, including as an intervention mechanism.
- This Cochrane Review was designed to examine whether interactive social media interventions improve health behaviors and outcomes in comparison with noninteractive interventions or no interventions.
- Findings of the systematic review indicate that interactive social media interventions may positively affect physical activity, weight loss, and well-being. However, the Cochrane Review authors caution that the quality of the evidence was low due to heterogeneity among studies, uncertain risk of bias, and studies’ failure to examine harms.
- The original commentary elaborates upon the conclusions of the Cochrane Review’s authors that future studies should more closely examine mediating variables such as social support and engagement, variables that may explain how social media interventions improve health outcomes.
- The original commentary also suggests that future studies of social media as a strategy for recruitment in social media interventions may provide insights as to whether such methods improve adherence.
Abstract
This brief summarizes the published Cochrane Review, “Behavioural Interventions Delivered Through Interactive Social Media for Health Behaviour Change, Health Outcomes, and Health Equity in the Adult Population,” by J. Petkovic, S. Duench, J. Trawin, O. Dewidar, J. Pardo Pardo, R. Simeon, M. DesMeules, D. Gagnon, J. Hatcher Roberts, A. Hossain, K. Pottie, T. Rader, P. Tugwell, M. Yoganathan, J. Presseau, & V. Welch (https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD012932.pub2). The Cochrane Review examines whether interactive social media interventions improve health behaviors and health outcomes, concluding that such interventions may benefit physical activity, weight loss, and well-being, but the evidence is not strong due to extensive heterogeneity and small effects. The review defines interactive social media as “activities, practices, or behaviours among communities of people who have gathered online to interactively to share information, knowledge, and opinions… in which adults are able to communicate directly with each other” (p. 1). The review and original commentary acknowledge the limitations, suggesting that future social media intervention trials use a common set of outcome measures, examine the role of mediating variables, and measure adherence. The original commentary describes other social media research that has shown an impact.
© 2026 RTI International. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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