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Tob Control doi:10.1136/tc.2010.042507
  • Brief report

Twitter=quitter? An analysis of Twitter quit smoking social networks

  1. James M Leonhardt2
  1. 1Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA
  2. 2Paul Merage School of Business, University of California Irvine, Irvine, California, USA
  1. Correspondence to Judith J Prochaska, University of California San Francisco, 401 Parnassus Avenue—TRC 0984, San Francisco, CA 94143-0984, USA; jprochaska{at}ucsf.edu

  1. Contributors JJP and CP conceived the idea for this study. JJP oversaw the data collection, conducted the data analyses and led writing of the manuscript. CP contributed to the manuscript and provided feedback on revisions. RK led the data collection effort and participated in the revision of the manuscript. JML contributed to the manuscript and interpretation of study findings.

  • Received 19 December 2010
  • Accepted 9 June 2011
  • Published Online First 5 July 2011

Abstract

Objective Widely popular, Twitter, a free social networking and micro-blogging service, offers potential for health promotion. This study examined the activity of Twitter quit smoking social network accounts.

Design A cross‐sectional analysis identified 153 activated Twitter quit smoking accounts dating back to 2007 and examined recent account activity for the month of August 2010.

Results The accounts had a median of 155 followers and 82 total tweets per account; 49% of accounts had >100 tweets. Posted content was largely inconsistent with clinical guidelines; 48% linked to commercial sites for quitting smoking and 43% had tweets on e‐cigarettes. In August 2010, 81 of the accounts (53%) were still active.

Conclusions Though popular for building quit smoking social networks, many of the Twitter accounts were no longer active, and tweet content was largely inconsistent with clinical guidelines. Future research is needed to examine the effectiveness of Twitter for supporting smoking cessation.

Footnotes

  • Funding This work was supported by the State of California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (#17RT-0077), the National Institute on Drug Abuse (#K23 DA018691 and #P50 DA09253) and the National Institute of Mental Health (#R01 MH083684).

  • Competing interests None.

  • Ethics approval This study was conducted with the approval of the UCSF.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.