Social Media and HIV Prevention: Certain Networks Help Reach Out to Younger Men at Risk

For young men at high-risk for HIV, early intervention can play a key role in preventing possible infection. Yet a recent study from the Columbia University School of Nursing suggests that using certain social media tools that help encourage safe sexual practices, including text messages, interactive games, chat rooms and social networks, may work just as well at preventing health issues as face-to-face intervention methods. These findings, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, show how eHealth interventions associated with reductions in risky sexual practices can potentially increase HIV testing among men who have sex with other men.

The new research comes at a critical time. As HIV infection rates throughout the United States had stabilized, they have now been steadily increasing among men who have sex with other men, particularly among young adults and racial and ethnic minorities.

"This is a population that is very used to technology, and there is built-in privacy and immediacy with digital communication that may be especially appealing to men who aren't comfortable disclosing their sexual orientation or their HIV status in a face-to-face encounter," said lead study author Rebecca Schnall, PhD, RN, an assistant professor at Columbia Nursing, in a news release. "If we want to reduce HIV infection rates, particularly among younger men, we need to explore the use of technology to meet them where they live - online and on their phones."

For the study, the researchers conducted a systemic literature review to determine the effectiveness of eHealth interventions for HIV prevention among men who have sex with other men. This included studies that focused exclusively on eHealth and that were limited to HIV prevention and testing rather than treatments, alone. It also specifically examined media targeted to men who engaged in sex with other men, published between January 2000 and April.

Researchers examined certain instituted social media techniques, including the interactive website Sexpulse; a video game used to help reduce rates of unprotected anal sex called Keep It Up! (KIU); chat rooms that helped to prevent HIV where participants could post and seek information about HIV testing, and other social media forums, including Twitter and Facebook, that helped spread HIV-prevention to friends and followers, alike.

"Taken together, the findings from all of these relatively small studies demonstrate the enormous potential of eHealth as a tool to prevent HIV," added Schnall, emphasizing the urgency of new prevention techniques. Although men who have sex with other men only represent an estimated 7 percent of the male population in the United States, they allegedly account for about 78 percent of the new HIV infections among males. "What we now have is a road map to follow for larger, longer trials that may definitely confirm the effectiveness of eHealth in fighting the spread of HIV."