How Social Media Is Providing A Holistic Approach To The Wellness And Health Industry

Social media technology isn’t just a frivolous, personal part of life as it has become an important component of health and wellness. Providing a powerful resource for doctors, patients, and people of all kinds to get healthy and stay informed about medicines, social media has changed the approach towards health.

Social media is an opportunity to have a fun, informal, useful conversation with your ideal client.  It’s not about pitching your products and services.  Social media is about building community and sharing useful information, tips, resources, links as well as answering questions and letting your readers get to know your business. 

Role in health and wellness

The role of social media in health and wellness sector is no more just high-tech. At its core, social media is all about sharing information. The word-of-mouth element of social media is making people start sharing articles and reports on health topics to which others may be unaware of. What’s more… these articles can be used as springboards for discussions in comments sections, engaging them in conversations about a healthy lifestyle.

Exercise and a healthy diet has become essential for keeping the body in good shape and less prone to ailments. Therefore, social media and games are collaborating to get people to engage in healthy living in various innovative ways. For example, a system called GymPact uses mobile technology to let users “check in” at the gym to fulfill accountability measures. Failure to meet these expectations costs the user money, which is then used to reward those who meet their goals. The application takes the concept of an accountability community, using social media to automate and expand.

Patient Interaction

Doctors are using social media tools to stay in touch with their patients, tracking their health, it can be something as sending Facebook calendar reminders for the next appointment to something more high-tech. Healthcare professionals are looking into career paths in healthcare informatics, which deals with the collection, transmission, and storage of medical data to improve the way clinics operate and the speed of accurate, thorough care.

Professional network

Doctors used to value their good referral networks until social media put that practice into overdrive. Social media has provided them with an opportunity to expand their networks from local to a global system, sharing and getting expert consultations from anywhere in the world. The speed of information sharing by digital technologies is helping healthcare professionals to have a better communication.

Negative Impact

Social media makes it tempting to be unproductive. It can lead to distraction which further leads to missing out on other important things, such as exercise. Our brains need to relax and recover, and social media doesn’t help with that.

Positive Impact

Social media could be used to spread happiness. Posting happy, encouraging, and inspirational posts may lead others to do the same. Another positive impact could be the ability to help identify certain mental illness like anhedonia which is the inability to enjoy normally enjoyable activities.