Social Media Was a Hostile Environment for Providers Before the Pandemic. It’s Worse Now

Twitter, Instagram, Facebook…all social media platforms, actually, tend to bring out their users’ most volatile tendencies. And the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to magnify the problem, according to the results of a survey published by JAMA Network Open. Pre-pandemic, one survey found that 23.3% of physicians reported being “attacked” on social media, most often due to views they expressed concerning firearms, vaccinations, and abortion access. Now, however, 88% of the 359 physicians who met the inclusion criteria reported harassment on the basis of advocacy on various issues. Other characteristics that made respondents target for online harassment included gender (45%), race or ethnicity (27%), sexual orientation (13%), and disability (6%). Anecdotally, urgent care operations and operators themselves have also reported being the subject of online attacks. There are measures you can take to combat such attacks, however. Read How to Protect Your Urgent Care’s Reputation from Online Trolls and Social Media Terrorists in the JUCM archive to learn what they are.