Investigators have found that patients with a lower level of education and social media awareness may hold more fatalistic beliefs about cancer compared with those who are more skilled at finding information through social media, according to a recent study published by Stimpson et al in Cancer Causes & Control. The findings may help enhance public health efforts to increase cancer screening and prevention.
Study Methods and Results
In the recent study, the investigators used data from the Health Information National Trends Survey to examine the knowledge of cancer risk factors, attitudes toward cancer screening, as well as prevention and screening behaviors among adult respondents who had used social media within the past year and completed the survey between March and November 2022.
The investigators measured cancer fatalism by asking the participants if they believe everything causes cancer, if they think there’s nothing they can do to prevent it, and if there are too many recommendations about cancer prevention. They then measured social media awareness by asking the participants about the difficulty in judging the truthfulness of health information. The respondents were recognized as having high social media awareness if they agreed that they could tell whether health information was true or false.
The investigators examined how the participants’ views related to their education level. Those with at least a college education and high social media awareness were less likely to hold fatalistic views about cancer. In contrast, higher percentages of those without a college degree and with low social media awareness held fatalistic beliefs.
The participants who struggled to evaluate health information on social media were 9%, 6%, and 21% more likely to believe that everything causes cancer, to think they cannot lower their risk of developing cancer, and to feel overwhelmed by the number of cancer prevention recommendations, respectively.
The research showed that 60% of the participants with a college education and high awareness of social media information accuracy agreed that “everything causes cancer,” compared with 74% among those with lower education and social media awareness. Additionally, the educated and social media–aware group was less likely to agree that there’s nothing they can do to lower their risk of developing cancer and that there are too many cancer prevention recommendations.
The participants with a fatalistic view of cancer were also less likely to be screened and detect symptoms until a later stage when the disease may not be adequately treated.
Conclusions
The investigators suggested that enhancing the ability of social media users to judge the reliability of online health information could decrease fatalistic views about cancer prevention and treatment. Public health efforts could help educate patients about the spread of health misinformation and disinformation on social media, focusing particularly on populations with low social media awareness and education levels.
“Our study emphasizes the importance of improving social media users’ ability to evaluate online health information, especially … those with lower education levels, to reduce negative attitudes toward cancer prevention and treatment,” emphasized lead study author Jim Stimpson, PhD, Professor in the Peter O’Donnell Jr School of Public Health and a member of the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center at UT Southwestern. “We should invest in digital media literacy for patients to help them better understand quality and fact-based information available online and in social media,” he concluded.
Disclosure: This research in this study was funded by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities at the National Institutes of Health. For full disclosures of the study authors, visit link.springer.com.
