Social media and amblyopia: evaluating content and intent on Instagram

Introduction: Social media is a widely-used avenue for the public to find health information. In particular, Instagram is a popular social media platform among adults who may have children within the amblyogenic age range, and it may be used to find amblyopia-related information. The purpose of this study is to assess the quality of the amblyopia information on Instagram. Methods: The top 200 publicly available Instagram posts about amblyopia from October to December 2022 were reviewed and scored using the Currency, Reliability, Authority, and Purpose (CRAP) test. Results: A quarter of posts were from healthcare providers (ophthalmologists, optometrists, opticians), and only 3% of posts were specifically from pediatric ophthalmologists. Most posts, however, were from businesses (51%), which were of lower quality than posts by providers. Discussion: Instagram represents a tremendous opportunity to educate the public. Better utilizing this resource may allow medical professionals to broadly spread accurate, unbiased data.