Introduction
Limited academic literature has reviewed the usefulness of Instagram and TikTok, which degree students extensively use. Considering this gap, our research group has undertaken a study aimed at elucidating the perspectives of health sciences university students regarding the referred social media as learning tools.
Methods
An online 23-question survey was distributed to undergraduate health sciences degree students across three Spanish universities. The questions were primarily related to the general usage of social media within the university educational environment, but they focused on Instagram and TikTok.
Results
Students identified Instagram (68%) and YouTube (39%) as the most comfortable social networks for learning. Seventy-five percent of students indicated that they followed Instagram accounts about medicine or nursing, with 47% of these accounts lacking apparent university affiliations. One in three students followed TikTok accounts associated with medicine or nursing, with 63% of these accounts appearing to be non-university affiliated.
Conclusions
Medical and nursing students are interested in seeking practical supplementary learning content from non-academic sources, particularly on the newest social networks like Instagram and TikTok. Improving the understanding of such content by university faculty can improve the guidance offered to students of such information.
