Health Care Content and Engagement in Chronic Illness Instagram Posts: Content Analysis, 2025, Daon

[Dolphin]

Health Care Content and Engagement in Chronic Illness Instagram Posts: Content Analysis

Background: Social media is an integral part of modern life in which people connect, learn, and share. The content shared on social media can drive behavior change as people, especially adolescents, seek to gain or maintain popularity. #Chronicillness is a rising trend on social media, yet the...

formative.jmir.org

Daon LD, Lee FSW, Saynina O, Wang CJ
Health Care Content and Engagement in Chronic Illness Instagram Posts: Content Analysis
JMIR Form Res 2025;9:e57523
doi: 10.2196/57523

Health Care Content and Engagement in Chronic Illness Instagram Posts: Content Analysis​

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Authors of this article:

Lindsey D Daon1, 2 ; Fu-Shiuan Whitney Lee2 ; Olga Saynina3 ; C Jason Wang2, 3

Abstract​

Background:

Instagram and other social media platforms provide a unique environment for people with chronic illnesses to share experiences, but posts with higher engagement may also shape behavior. The hashtag #ChronicIllness appears in over 5 million posts, reflecting the large digital community where users seek validation, connection, and support. Frameworks such as social cognitive theory, self-presentation theory, and illness identity theory suggest that highly engaging content can shift social norms and drive behavior change via observational learning. Despite the strong theoretical basis for this behavioral impact, little is known about what chronic illness–related content is the most engaging.

Objective:

The aim of this study is to identify the content of Instagram posts related to chronic illness and determine if health care content is associated with higher engagement.

Methods:

This study is a mixed methods content analysis of 279 publicly available Instagram posts tagged with #chronicillness, #chronicallyill, or #spoonie. Posts were selected via convenience sampling and included if they featured original, nonvideo content. Photos, hashtags, and captions were coded for themes including location, medical equipment, health care experience, and illness identity. Quantitative metrics, such as likes, comments, and overperforming scores (a normalized metric of engagement), were extracted using CrowdTangle. Multivariate analyses assessed if health care content (posts featuring health care experiences or photos in a medical setting or with medical equipment) was associated with a higher odds of overperforming.

Results:

Posts had a median of 25 (IQR 0-14,936) likes, 3 (IQR 0-525) comments, and 20 (IQR 1-31) hashtags. A total of 222 (80%) posts were created by women, and 110 (40%) were overperforming. Photo analysis (260 posts with 406 photos) showed 27 (10%) in health care settings, and 49 (19%) included medical equipment, with 10 (4%) featuring invasive devices (eg, intravenous lines and feeding tubes), which were strongly associated with higher engagement. Hashtag analysis revealed that 243 (87%) posts referenced a medical condition, most commonly chronic pain (n=101, 36%), fibromyalgia (n=56, 20%), and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (n=38, 14%), while 57 (20%) included medical interventions. Captions reflected 4 main themes: medical experience, illness journey, connection, and nonillness experiences. In multivariate regression analysis, longer captions (odds ratio [OR] 2.44, 95% CI 1.05‐5.67), health care content (OR 1.85, 95% CI 1.00‐3.42), and invasive medical equipment (OR 6.19, 95% CI 1.16‐32.99) were independently associated with overperforming.

Conclusions:

Posts featuring health care content and invasive medical equipment were associated with significantly more engagement, suggesting that medicalized portrayals of illness may be amplified on Instagram. This visibility may offer support but also risks reinforcing illness-centered identities and overmedicalization through the influence of observational learning and identity formation. Medical professionals must be aware of these trends and promote balanced, evidence-based content. Future research should explore how social media shapes health behaviors, identity, and utilization to mitigate potential harms while preserving support.

JMIR Form Res 2025;9:e57523

doi:10.2196/57523

Keywords​

social media (2007); chronic illness (65); content analysis (224); Instagram (89); infodemics (16); web-based communities (8); digital health (2582); social presentation theory (1); social cognitive theory (20); illness identity theory (1)

 

[Utsikt]

Now do the same analysis for Garner&Co’s social media.

 

[rvallee]

Ugh. Cringeworthy and weak. Like a bunch of stuck-up adults trying to understand kids' slang these days, and unable to tell when they are given fake answers. The children are totally being converted to satanism by listening to rock albums backwards at slow speed.

Posts featuring health care content and invasive medical equipment were associated with significantly more engagement, suggesting that medicalized portrayals of illness may be amplified on Instagram.

Yes, imagine that, using imagery in design to communicate context, what a concept. Why would social media discussions of food feature pictures of kitchens, ovens, ingredients, plates, and so on? Good grief. Obviously if you go into the sports hashtags you will not find images associated with sports, serving the purpose of clear communication at a simple glance.

Posts had a median of 25 (IQR 0-14,936) likes, 3 (IQR 0-525) comments, and 20 (IQR 1-31) hashtags.

So, accidentally, they debunked the popular bullshit about social media being a major, hell the main, source of social contagion of illness-faking behavior. Those numbers are minuscule. Even though the population behind this is tens of millions strong, this is basically no engagement at all. A community library can easily get more activity than this simply posting about trivial things like the week's schedule. Instagram is huge, and about the perfect platform to try and support this narrative, as it's more graphic than textual, whereas on other social media platforms where there is more substance it's more difficult to ignore the content of what the community is saying.

Not that social media is needed for that. Tens of thousands of articles have been published in the news media, describing an absolutely miserable and appalling failure. It's also well-supported by studies, surveys and reports. But all they want is the narratives that excuse them of fulfilling their duties.

And of course this belief did not come out of data, it came out of a need to excuse systemic discrimination, and it never matters that their premises get debunked, they still argue that they, somehow, must be true anyway.

Medical professionals must be aware of these trends and promote balanced, evidence-based content. Future research should explore how social media shapes health behaviors, identity, and utilization to mitigate potential harms while preserving support.

Given those numbers, it clearly does no such thing, and pretending otherwise is completely unserious. Plus because they reject the answer, they don't bother asking themselves why this even exists, and it does because we are discriminated, lied to and bullshitted to our faces, so the idea that medical professionals will "promote balanced, evidence-based content" is straight up farcical.

They only look for narratives that confirm their expectations. They don't look at content or ask questions because they don't like the answers anyway, and so supply their own, crafting their own narratives that make them feel fine about millions of lives being wasted by their dereliction of duty.

 

[Trish]

This visibility may offer support but also risks reinforcing illness-centered identities and overmedicalization through the influence of observational learning and identity formation.

So judgemental and purely based on biased assumption, not reality.

Future research should explore how social media shapes health behaviors, identity, and utilization to mitigate potential harms while preserving support.

Maybe future research should explore how inadequate medical and personal care provision and social rejection and isolation drive sick people to social media to seek support.

I really dislike this sort of research. It's lazy, makes false assumptions and fails to engage directly with the sick people.

I don't suppose they asked the permission of the few hundred people whose posts they 'analysed'. Let alone asked them to tell their own story about why they had turned to social media for support.