Teledentistry: Evaluation of Instagram posts related to bruxism

BACKGROUND: Instagram statistic has attracted roughly one billion, monthly active users. In 2021, Instagram belonged to the most popular social networks worldwide. It has been considered an effective tool that contributes to the contemporary sharing of information for raising public awareness while providing educational information. The growing presence of Instagram and frequent user engagement has made it a potentially effective platform for patient communication, seeking educational information, product information for consumers, and advertisements in the form of images and videos. OBJECTIVE: To assess and compare the contents of Instagram posts by healthcare professionals (HP) and non-professional healthcare workers (NPHW) on bruxism and to assess public engagement with this content. METHODS: Twelve 'hashtag' terms linked to bruxism were searched. HP and NPHW analyzed the content of relevant posts for the presence of domains. Discourse analysis assessed the post quality for themes. We conducted the descriptive and univariate statistical analysis, whereas inter-rater reliability was tested using Cohen's kappa. RESULTS: A total of 1184 posts were retrieved, with the majority uploaded by NPHW (622 posts). The posts by HPs were in text and image(s) format (53%) with the range of 25-1100 Instagram post 'Likes.' 'Mouthguard' (90) % was the most frequently included domain posted by HP, followed by 'treatment plan/pain management', and complaints of clicking or locking of TMJ' (84%). Greater number of domains (p= 0.03) were seen in the posts by NPHWs, compared to HP's having more bruxism-related content. The inter-rater reliability method (0.89) was used for the presence of domains. CONCLUSION: NPHW uses Instagram more frequently to post bruxism-related information than HP. HPs must ascertain that the content posted by NPHW is relevant and the concerns addressed in posts are to the purpose.