Adolescent and parent use of new technologies for health communication: a study in an urban Latino community

Abstract

<em>Background</em>. Mobile communication technologies provide novel opportunities to support clinic-based health initiatives. Adoption of technologies for daily use and for health communication can differ between communities, depending upon demographic and cultural characteristics. <br /><em>Design and methods</em>. A survey was administered in adolescent primary care and subspecialty clinics to assess parent-adolescent preferences in use of mobile technologies and social media to support provider-patient communication in an urban Latino community. <br /><em>Results</em>. Of 130 respondents (65 parent-adolescent pairs), approximately half frequently sent and received text messages but lacked agreement regarding the other’s text messaging use. In contrast, adolescents only rarely used email compared to parents (15.4% <em>versus</em> 37.5%, P=0.006). Of social media, FacebookTM/MySpaceTM was most frequently used by parents and youth (60% and 55.4%, P=0.59); however, most lacked interest in using social media for health communication. Parents reported more interest than adolescents in receiving email (73.4% <em>versus</em> 35.9%, P&lt;0.001) and text messages (58.5% <em>versus</em> 33.9%, P=0.005) for health, but had more concerns about privacy issues (26.2% <em>versus</em> 9.2%, P=0.01). Respondents who were American born (aOR 5.7, 95%CI 1.2-28.5) or regularly used Instant Messaging or FacebookTM/MySpaceTM (aOR 4.6, 95%CI 1.4-14.7) were more likely to be interested in using social media for health communication. <br /><em>Conclusions</em>. These findings underscore the importance of targeted assessment for planning the utilization of communication technologies and social media in clinical care or research for underserved youth.